Hacker News Reader

Comment by dsuth | Hacker News Reader

There's more to it than that. In most places, the title 'Engineer' is a legal entity. In Australia, signing off on a design as an engineer makes you legally responsible for guaranteeing that it has been correctly designed, and is safe for public use. This includes personal liability in the case that it fails (bridge, software, whatever), and can be shown that it was not designed according to appropriate standards, or what should 'reasonably' have been done.

So basically, don't call yourself an engineer unless you're willing to sign off on something, and be legally bound by it. This implies a strong background in problem solving and structured design processes, to remove as much risk (both personal and to the public) as possible, which is also vital to engineering.

View on HN

In the US we have the title PE, Professional Engineer, which requires some additional qualifications (exams, supervised apprenticeship, etc), and of course a state license. Most people don't bother any more, which has lead to a much smaller number of PE-Engineers many of whom are relegated to being mere license-holders who sign drawings for others, who do the actual engineering.

>So basically, don't call yourself an engineer unless you're willing to sign off on something, and be legally bound by it.

I'm sorry to say it (not really); but for a number of reasons, some good and some bad, the title has been co-opted, and there is no going back.

>This implies a strong background in problem solving and structured design processes

As far as that goes, I've met a number of pedigreed folks who can't engineer their way out of a wet paper bag.

> Most people don't bother any more, which has lead to a much smaller number of PE-Engineers many of whom are relegated to being mere license-holders who sign drawings for others, who do the actual engineering.

To some extent this happens in Australia as well, although there is a movement both to require things to be signed off by a PE (or CPEng here), and to have those engineers provide documented supervision of the work they sign off on.

> As far as that goes, I've met a number of pedigreed folks who can't engineer their way out of a wet paper bag.

No argument there, certification is never proof positive of competence. I've met very good engineers who aren't Engineers with a capital E, and very bad Engineers who knew enough to fool a test board, but not much more.

The existence of these licensing schemes is far from perfect, but better than nothing IMO. Applying the concept to general purpose software is another discussion entirely!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com