[catlas3r]

I prefer the term "software engineer" for a reason I haven't seen yet in this thread: clarity when speaking to people in other industries.

Among many of the people I talk to on a regular basis, if I told them I was a "developer" they would assume that I was a real estate developer.

If I told them I was a "programmer" it would be a little clearer, but before I moved into software I worked in the events industry for a few years, where "programmer" means "one who develops event programming."

In practice, I could append "software" in front of either "programmer" or "developer" to provide that clarity, but "software engineer" seems to be more common, and to me feels like it more adequately covers the totality of my job, which is as much about measuring, planning, and communicating as it is about producing code.

[babesh]

I think part of the discomfort is that there is no exam that software engineers have to pass (other than a few states) unlike real engineering professions. I suspect and I suspect many others suspect that a large percentage would not actually be able pass a meaningful exam.

However passing such an exam would probably only be partly correlated to success in the field. Part of this is because exams are imperfect, part because success in the field is not dependent on engineering skill, and part is because the tech field’s success is based on finding/creating/replacing/owning (new) markets rather than pure engineering.

If software is much better than what was there before, even shoddy software engineering will be superior to the existing solutions.

[catlas3r]

The exams and credentials part is certainly murky. One could argue we make it worse in tech. Among the certifications I hold is at least one with "certified engineer" in the title (RHCE), but that's hardly only ambiguous one, with "engineer" showing up in all sorts of vendor and third-party certs and "architect" and "auditor" also finding their way into many others.

Are those phrases misleading? I don't know. I certainly feel like I worked pretty hard to earn and maintain the certifications I hold, but I can't compare the rigour and level of effort to licensure, because that's not required of me for what I do.

I also know that there are quite a few "certifications" out there that aren't rigorous at all, that are basically multiple-choice exams you can cram for without actually learning anything. I've never bothered going after a CompTIA certification for that reason.

It's a tough problem. On one hand, I despise artificial barriers to entry on principle. On the other hand, being able to understand and trust a person's base level of understanding and competence does have value.

[babesh]

The solution IMHO is to perform your own test. It is hard to scale unless you have some superior filter or are a magnet of some sort (back channel references or your company is really hot).

[polishdude20]

The funny thing is, to be a professional engineer in Canada, the exam you take is more of an ethics and law exam rather than a skills exam. You prove that you've worked for four years or more under a P.Eng and do that exam and you've got your cert.