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by jiggy2011 4690 days ago
Not necessarily true, even in more formal engineering disciplines it is often possible to become an engineer (as recognised by professional bodies) without a degree.

In software engineering this is even more blurry, for example my school offered both computer science as software engineering degrees. However in practise the only difference was that the software engineering track had a mandatory module on UML.
1 comments
flexd 4690 days ago
We have pretty much the same thing here at school, with a few differences. I got to computer engineering, which has math, physics, some chemistry (for unknown reasons) and a few other things. While the computer science/informatics course has just discrete math and no calculus, no physics and no chemistry. They have more IT classes.

At least here in Norway 'Engineer' is not a protected title (but Civil Engineer is), so anyone could just call themselves an engineer.

But unless you have tons of experience and can prove you know the required things then I doubt you will be getting a job as a Construction Engineer or something like that without a degree.

In IT I doubt anyone cares as long as you prove yourself capable.

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jiggy2011 4690 days ago
This depends a great deal on jurisdiction, in the UK there are many jobs with titles of "X engineer" which would more accurately be described as "X technician" or "X operator".

In places which more rigorously enforce titles it is usually down to a professional body to set requirements, though even then these tend to not mandate a degree (though that makes the path smoother). For example the IEEE requires either an IEEE accredited degree or 6 years of proven work experience in a relevant field to achieve member status.

In the UK we have a institution for IT professionals (The British Computer Society) though as far as I can tell nobody really cares much about it.

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noir_lord 4688 days ago
Lots of the people I've worked with that I've respected have been members of the IEEE they seem to have quite a few programmers and all the ones I've met have been excellent.

Even met one of these once http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certified_Software_Development_... he was a scarily good software engineer.

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