[fathermarz]

I think there is a fine line. YouTube is not critical software and no one’s life depends on the safety (putting mental health aside) of the code running. Some software engineers do however write code that is critical, but to your point, I don’t think they are ever considered liable.

I went through an acquisition as a Canadian software developer getting acquired by an American company. They wanted us to be called engineers like the rest of their SWEs but in Canada it’s a protected namespace. It’s illegal to call yourself an engineer without having the ring and the papers. Which personally I can appreciate.

[cess11]

Once I worked in a company that had an ex-Googler on the board, who insisted on calling us engineers and wanted us to call ourselves that. In swedish, of course, 'ingenjörer'.

It's not a protected title in Sweden, but we still refused, because we were nothing like engineers. We were a minuscule team of mostly self-taught hackers who happened to be employed to solve business problems in a system for managing other companies and their customers. I had some idea of the rigour of engineering but my colleagues did not, still, they also weren't willing to appropriate the title.

This lead to meetings with this person being quite uncomfortable at times, embarrassing even. To me it was an obvious sign that they were unfit for managing roles. Two thirds of the team, me included, resigned at the same time after they had been increasingly active in the management of the technical department.

Since he was on the board the CEO could not get rid of him even though he knew that this person was destroying the dev team.

[1313ed01]

I worked for several American companies in Sweden an all of them insisted on calling us engineers. Many I work with happen to be engineers, but I dropped out before getting my (computer) engineering degree. It's embarrassing. I would never call myself a software engineer or any other kind of engineer (or a doctor or lawyer or anything else I am not).

[cess11]

If I must I call myself a software or systems developer. I make changes aimed at some improvement to software systems involving machines and people in a way that is more like a craft than engineering. In my view I'm closer to a plumber than someone with a degree in technical engineering. I take some inspiration from engineers, but unlike them I work in an environment where simulation can be as good as the real thing, because both are virtual, and simulation is exceedingly cheap. It is not when you're building an ocean going ship or a bridge or a nuclear reactor.

I can also tell my tools to automate my work once I understand it well enough.

One of my more senior colleagues at that company called himself a 'fixer', because to his understanding, what he did was fix things.

[m00x]

Youtube should consider their engineers responsible for the software they write. Big companies these days are just bureaucracy tricks and politics. There's a small handful of real talent, but they're quickly moving to new startups.

Also, I'm Canadian as well, and almost everyone calls themselves "software engineer" these days. You just can't say P.eng. in your title. You could be forced to remove it from linkedin/etc if you're called out, but it rarely happens.

[eldaisfish]

Your latter point is legally incorrect. The protected term in Canada is “engineer”. If someone calls themselves an engineer without a P.Eng, that’s an offence.

[fathermarz]

Thank you for the education. What is the consequence of an offence?

[eldaisfish]

at least in Ontario, fines, starting at $ 25,000.

[rvba]

I disagree. People's lives depend on money earned from youtube.

[fathermarz]

Revenue generating services aren’t the same as critical infrastructure. This bug, I would argue, does not hurt creator’s revenue in a substantial enough way to call it “safety”.

[abustamam]

People's lives depend on money earned from lots of things, criminal and otherwise.