- It undermines a long tradition of designing and building infrastructure in the public interest.
IMO the only people who should be allowed to be called engineers are these guys. Everyone else is just posin'.
When I saw the headline I immediately though of Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice. The issue of what to call yourself is definitely an ongoing debate within software and computing. The last place I worked at let you pick your own title and I chose 'TLA Enthusiast'. I think that using the term engineer may be a bit of a hold over from early in the life computing science where people tried to apply the terms they already had to this new field. Should it be something else? Probably. What should that be? Probably not programmer, as it's a little reductive, IMO.
Did you know that the NASA Administration has a serious problem with RAS Syndrome?TLA Enthusiast
I'm currently looking for a new job after being made redundant and it's proving an absolute nightmare figuring out the level of position being advertised. We've got to the point in the UK where an 'executive' (historically a Board level title) can now be given to a call centre worker, a 'director' (again a senior level title often on the board) refers to the tea boy and a 'manager'/'engineer' title can be anything from a low level supervisor to a head of a global department. I know this is a little bit traditional, but there should be a standard global ranking system for job adverts that indicates the approximate pay grade.
I had a conversation with an acquaintance who works at a bank recently: "I got vice-president." "That's great!" "No it isn't, I'm the last on my team to get it." "... everyone on your team is a vice president?" "And three quarters of the whole department." I insist on calling myself a programmer, on the grounds that anyone who assumes I'm a peon to be ignored because of it is someone I'd rather someone else have to deal with.
This article seems to operating with a definition for engineer that is much different than mine. So I went to wikipedia. It certainly seems like a programmer would meet that criteria.An engineer is a practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics, and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical, societal and commercial problems. Engineers design materials, structures, and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety, and cost.