> For example in Ontario in order to join Professional Engineers Ontario and call yourself an engineer you must meet strict academic and work experience requirements[1], pass an ethics exam, and pay a yearly membership fee.

Sounds like a racket, especially given that the PEO is a private organization. I’m not sure why this is supposed to be a good thing.

> Everyone who graduates from an accredited engineering program in Canada has to take an ethics course and has these rules drilled into their heads.

It bothers me that people believe that A) ethics can be taught like any other engineering class and B) ethics should be prescribed by some professional association.

> But then I graduated and half the people I run in to at hackathons and conferences did a two week bootcamp

I agree this is a problem, but most of the actual engineers I meet in real life (i.e. people who did a 4-or-more year accredited engineering program, including some who are from Canada) don’t actually have a particularly impressive level of rigor that would set them apart from most of the college-educated programmers I meet.