I have been downvoted to hell for what I’m about to say, but I’m going to say it again anyway.
IT support people are now called engineers. No, I don’t like it. No it’s not proper “engineering”. Yes, language evolves and there’s nothing we can do about it. If that’s a problem for people, I recommend screaming into the void. It doesn’t help, but you feel better after a while.
IMO no engineering degree, no engineer. There’s some exceptions for incredible self taught folks but they’re drowned out by so many others that just use the title without the skill
You can arbitrarily gatekeep the title all you want, but the reality is that engineering is a group of concepts and ideologies that can be applied to many disciplines in many ways.
Just because the person doing the engineering doesn’t meet your personal standards doesn’t mean engineering isn’t being accomplished.
All that being said. A professional engineer is an actual controlled title. (You can’t sign documents as a PE without getting the license, just like an attorney (JD) or doctor (MD)) but far and away most engineers, do not have this title, because most engineering jobs and tasks don’t require it.
Finally, (in most states) you can work with no degree under a PE for four years, pass the FE and PE, get your title and build a bridge. So as far as the most stringent title goes, it still doesn’t actually require a degree.
I think most engineers have an understanding amongst each other, regardless of their specialty, we can all teach ourselves to problem solve. So many math and physics classes as an EE just to get to my core classes. It definitely a certain type of person to get through the thick of it.
Major engineering organizations, like the IEEE or the ASME, often require degrees, but do have exceptions built into the rules for on the job experience. So this does happen, and regularly enough that there’s consideration for it.
That’s kind of my point. No one at subway is calling themselves artists, it’s insulting and they don’t like it. You answered your own question, the answer is: they don’t.
In instances where they use their given title it’s probably for convenience. I’m an EMT, when I was doing interfacility runs for a private ambulance company (aka not doing the expected work of an EMT) I didn’t call myself an ambulance driver or professional insurance fraud fall guy, I called myself an EMT because it was easier to use in day to day conversation. If someone wanted to talk about it I would explain the nuances but I’m not gonna do that every time someone asks me what I do for work in polite conversation
And my point is that support and service desk IT people DO call themselves engineers. The guy above us did so. So if it were insulting, they sure they wouldn’t identify that way.
I know plently of helpdesk guys that do engineering, if engineering is “identify an issue, find and implement a fix.” Its varying degrees of rudimentary, but the same could be said about anyone in conputer science.
The truth is no one in computer science, programmers, SREs or otherwise, are licensed engineers. Why does a programmer have more of a claim to an unearned title than anyone else in the field?
It’s exactly this. No one complains when IT infrastructure engineers design and build systems and call themselves engineers, even though they don’t have a PE certification. So if they can do it, why not support staff?
Programming grew up in an environment where failure is cheap (relatively speaking). You might make a mistake that costs five, six, or even seven figures (I’m sure I’ve made at least one seven figure mistake), but nobody will die from it. When people could die, such as flight control software, different development techniques for formal methods are used. Those tend to cost at least ten times more than other methods, so they aren’t used much otherwise.
If anything, we should lean into this as an advantage. Iterate even faster, catch failures faster, and fix it faster.
I mean, that is fine and all about the historical reasons we dont have engineer titles, but the OP comment was gatekeeping one part of IT from another like there was an actual legal distinction between a dev, someone in infrastructure or someone in support.
Sounds like tech support, not engineering
I have been downvoted to hell for what I’m about to say, but I’m going to say it again anyway.
IT support people are now called engineers. No, I don’t like it. No it’s not proper “engineering”. Yes, language evolves and there’s nothing we can do about it. If that’s a problem for people, I recommend screaming into the void. It doesn’t help, but you feel better after a while.
IMO no engineering degree, no engineer. There’s some exceptions for incredible self taught folks but they’re drowned out by so many others that just use the title without the skill
Why stop there? No PE no engineer.
You can arbitrarily gatekeep the title all you want, but the reality is that engineering is a group of concepts and ideologies that can be applied to many disciplines in many ways.
Just because the person doing the engineering doesn’t meet your personal standards doesn’t mean engineering isn’t being accomplished.
There is nothing about the engineering process that requires a degree.
All that being said. A professional engineer is an actual controlled title. (You can’t sign documents as a PE without getting the license, just like an attorney (JD) or doctor (MD)) but far and away most engineers, do not have this title, because most engineering jobs and tasks don’t require it.
Finally, (in most states) you can work with no degree under a PE for four years, pass the FE and PE, get your title and build a bridge. So as far as the most stringent title goes, it still doesn’t actually require a degree.
I think most engineers have an understanding amongst each other, regardless of their specialty, we can all teach ourselves to problem solve. So many math and physics classes as an EE just to get to my core classes. It definitely a certain type of person to get through the thick of it.
Major engineering organizations, like the IEEE or the ASME, often require degrees, but do have exceptions built into the rules for on the job experience. So this does happen, and regularly enough that there’s consideration for it.
It’s corporate self aggrandizing wank. On par with calling subway workers “sandwich artists”. It’s as insulting to the workers as it is ridiculous
Then why do the workers choose to identify as such in public?
No one at Subway is going around calling themselves an artist.
That’s kind of my point. No one at subway is calling themselves artists, it’s insulting and they don’t like it. You answered your own question, the answer is: they don’t.
In instances where they use their given title it’s probably for convenience. I’m an EMT, when I was doing interfacility runs for a private ambulance company (aka not doing the expected work of an EMT) I didn’t call myself an ambulance driver or professional insurance fraud fall guy, I called myself an EMT because it was easier to use in day to day conversation. If someone wanted to talk about it I would explain the nuances but I’m not gonna do that every time someone asks me what I do for work in polite conversation
And my point is that support and service desk IT people DO call themselves engineers. The guy above us did so. So if it were insulting, they sure they wouldn’t identify that way.
I know plently of helpdesk guys that do engineering, if engineering is “identify an issue, find and implement a fix.” Its varying degrees of rudimentary, but the same could be said about anyone in conputer science.
The truth is no one in computer science, programmers, SREs or otherwise, are licensed engineers. Why does a programmer have more of a claim to an unearned title than anyone else in the field?
It’s exactly this. No one complains when IT infrastructure engineers design and build systems and call themselves engineers, even though they don’t have a PE certification. So if they can do it, why not support staff?
Programming grew up in an environment where failure is cheap (relatively speaking). You might make a mistake that costs five, six, or even seven figures (I’m sure I’ve made at least one seven figure mistake), but nobody will die from it. When people could die, such as flight control software, different development techniques for formal methods are used. Those tend to cost at least ten times more than other methods, so they aren’t used much otherwise.
If anything, we should lean into this as an advantage. Iterate even faster, catch failures faster, and fix it faster.
I mean, that is fine and all about the historical reasons we dont have engineer titles, but the OP comment was gatekeeping one part of IT from another like there was an actual legal distinction between a dev, someone in infrastructure or someone in support.
There is not.
I mean there is distinction between software engineers and software developers as far as the degree
Neither role is legally defined, so I actually disagree.
You can make a case for there being a differnce, but because every job defines the roles in IT differently with no actual standard, it’s all opinion.