[agentultra]

In my country software engineer is a protected term. People get sued for calling themselves software engineers if they are not licensed. For me the difference between “software engineer” and “technician” is that the latter has a limited scope of work and is supervised by the former.

I think it’s a good idea to have a mix of both. There is a certain amount of toil involved in large systems and automating every single task is not always worth the effort. It’s nice to have technicians around to help with that toil.

[kreetx]

Curious to know more, which country, how does one get a license, and how do the non-licensed sw-s call themselves?

[agentultra]

Canada. The license requirements are set by the provincial boards. Most of them require a certain level of education, an exam, and work experience supervised by an engineer.

There are still a lot of folks here who will call themselves, "software engineer," or have it in their job title. However the Professional Engineers of Canada has successfully sued people in recent years. Some cases were defended successfully but various engineering boards are appealing them:

https://globalnews.ca/news/10163565/alberta-engineers-appeal...

https://engineerscanada.ca/become-an-engineer/use-of-profess...

Myself, and like minded people, use other terms like "Software Developer," instead. Personally I would like the chance to be licensed but I lack the education requirement and it seems like, in my province, they removed the equivalent work experience route.

Also... these boards haven't been targeting companies lately for using the term and practising engineering without a licensed engineer on staff supervising anyone... to my knowledge at least. Software might be a different world if we were beholden to our profession rather than our employers.

[kreetx]

Thanks!

As a fellow developer with no formal education I also feel that strictly requiring a CS or similar degree probably isn't the best way - that there should be a way to account for work experience, perhaps some kind of test. Wouldn't mind taking one myself.

The further I am in my career though the less any employer seems to care where and what did I study.