Hacker News Reader

Comment by DavidPP | Hacker News Reader

It's a bit higher a than 40K, but not that much. For example, I would have said around 60K and after some research, it seem I'm not wrong : http://www.payscale.com/research/CA/State=Qu%C3%A9bec/Salary

AVG: Software developer : 58K

Also in Quebec, you cannot call yourself an engineer unless you want to an engineer school and are part of their order.

View on HN

This is a very good thing that I wish the US would adopt. We have people with three months total programming experience jumping from sales jobs to programming and calling themselves engineers. It's an insult to those who actually perform engineering professionally.

It might be a good thing if university graduates from computer science programs could apply for software engineering positions... Consequently, most educated hiring managers don't hire for engineers, which brings us back to square one.

No, it's not. In practice it is a way to give professional associations a monopoly and force people to pay fees to them (because it is membership of those associations which give you the ability to call yourself whatever, not what you completed at university)

Fortunately there are multiple job titles in computing that mean the same thing, so this should never be a real problem in computing.

Yes, yes it definitely is. While professional engineering certification might be a monopolistic moneymaking scheme, it also verifies that an engineer has some idea that he knows what the hell he's doing in a way that graduating from a university can't. Standardized tests have a real and valuable purpose. I'm more comfortable knowing that an engineer graduating from Western State has an independent source to test his knowledge against. Accreditation alone can't do this.

"[...] In Quebec, you cannot call yourself an engineer unless you went to an engineering school [...]"

That is actually true in most (all?) provinces.

It's true, except in BC some use it casually as just another job title (e.g., software engineer), and I don't recall anyone saying anything about it.

Yes it is true in most provinces, especially in Ontario.

"part of their order" is a very important part of that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com