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As someone with an actual accredited engineering degree, I find it bizarre that Silicon Valley has decided that the term "engineer" doesn't even need to be qualified anymore. Even without getting into the flame war over whether "software engineers" are real engineers or not, there's a very large pool of engineers to which this post doesn't apply at all. I can't be the only one in the latter pool that reads HN, can I?

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I used to be reluctant to call myself an engineer. I don't actually get to do too much engineering in my work. But I've seen too many less qualified people calling themselves engineers so I might as well... Besides, my degree is from the Engineering faculty at my university rather than Science where the CS/SE degrees are. At least that's how I justify it to myself.

You're not the only one. I have a Master's and it was hard. I went for my engineering degrees after more than a decade as a technician and programmer in telecom. It's a world of difference. A cert from Microsoft or Cisco or whomever doesn't compare. We earn the title, they enjoy it.

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