[hatfieej]

During college in Indiana, a couple of us software engineers wanted to take the state's "Professional Engineer" certification exam. Just to see how we'd do. We were told plainly, "you cannot register for the PE exam because the state of Indiana does not recognize software engineers as 'real engineers'". However, if we were Electrical Engineers and wrote embedded software, that would make us a "real engineer". They explained that the certification was primarily designed for Civil and Mechanical engineers. One guy looked into changing his major temporarily just to take the test but assumed the college administration wouldn't be thrilled about that.

[John_Cena]

"real engineer" here. Computer Engineer freshly graduated from GT and looking for a job in embedded devices. I can tell you on the other side of the coin it's also annoying to be muddling through a sea of software "engineering" jobs to actually find one for an entry level engineer. I believe the problem is that software engineering started as a buzzword then got its degree paths. Also I am under the impression your curricula is nowhere near as rigorous as required for engineering.

I have been on HN since the beginning of my studies and after a decade of lurking I have made an account. If anyone is hiring CE's or would like to help me out of the good of their heart please PM me. I have had a tough time landing an entry job since medical reasons extended my college time to 7 years.

[b_t_s]

"curricula is nowhere near as rigorous as required for engineering" this depends on the degree. For a BA that's true, for a BS less so. For a BS, the first 2 years of math and science were virtually identical for all engineering/science/CS student at my uni. That included calc1-3, plus 1-2 semesters each of the "real" physics/bio/chem classes for sicence/engineering students. After that it got a lot more specialized though we still had to take some 400 level maths with the math majors. He was just trying to say "Look I know most people who write to you can't do rudimentary physics calculations, but I most certainly can"