[greenshackle]

> At least in the US

Yeah, don't do this in Canada, or the professional engineers association can come after you. Only certified members of an engineers professional association can use the title.

To be clear, it is illegal, for example, to pass around business cards that say 'Software Engineer' if you're not certified.

As an amusing example, in the province of Ontario, people with the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer certification are allowed to use the title 'MCSE', but not its expansion, because it contains the word 'Engineer'.

However, you are always allowed to state your degree, so you can say, {name}, B. Eng., or M. Eng., as the case may be.

*At least, in Quebec and Ontario - the legislation is province-scoped, I assume other provinces are similar.

[khedoros]

Interesting. I can look in the corporate address book, and we've got people in Burlington, Ontario who have titles like "SW Quality Engineer" and "Group Leader-SW Engineer". I wonder if that means that they can't put their official titles onto business cards.

Coming from a US perspective, I feel like "engineer" on its own is a descriptive word. "Professional Engineer" is a trademarked title, and that seems reasonable. Do I have certification as a PE? No. Do I think it's reasonable to describe what I do as software engineering? Yes. To me, it implies that I take part in planning, designing, implementing, supporting, and retiring software. "Programmer" connotes that I took someone else's design, wrote to that spec, and handed the results off to someone else, rather than taking part in the entire lifecycle.