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I think it's awesome that you can become a software engineer without any engineering schooling. Where I live you have to take software engineering in University to be a software engineer. Bootcamps and certs usually only get you dev jobs.

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Many companies use the terms "software engineer" and "developer" and "programmer" and "analyst" interchangeably. There's no universal agreement on the difference. I'm not saying it should be this way, but it is.

In my market, a title of software engineer generally means higher compensation.

Even though most of us are not real engineers who studied BEs, the title has more prestige than developer (or god forbid, programmer).

It’s a title arms race and that’s how it’s going to be until it’s illegal to call yourself an engineer w/o an engineering degree, such as in Texas and Canada.

They're all meaningless.

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