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Comment by bliblablubb2 | Hacker News Reader

Funny, I actually am from Germany and it feels just as arbitrary.

May well be wrong about Germany then.

I do know there are regular arguments here in the UK about the "Architect" title, the RIBA (the Royal Institute of British Architects) regularly sue people who call themselves Architects but don't have the qualification or aren't payed up members. This includes "software architects". People who work in building architecture but haven't got enough qualifications often call themselves "architectural designers" to get around the rules.

Really? I've worked in small and large local and multinational companies in the UK - many people have an architect job title without any qualifications and it's never been a problem. It's not just "architect" on its own, there's usually some prefix like software/cloud/data/infrastructure/solutions architect.

Your right, looks like there was a debate about it all about 10-15 years ago but from the ARB:

> "We take a common sense approach to the use of ‘architect’ that isn’t connected to building and design, for example with ‘software architect’ or ‘systems architect’ which are increasingly used by the computer and IT industry."

https://arb.org.uk/architect-information/what-we-do-to-regul...

I don’t think you are wrong about Engineer in Germany but it just doesn’t apply to software. If you go into classical engineering there are rules. For example you couldn’t call yourself a civil engineer (‘Bauingenieur’) in Germany. If you are outside of classical engineering fields nobody gives a shit. You could call your self a “culinary engineer” and nobody would care. Computer sience is usualy grouped with mathematics so it too falls outside of classical engineering. We as a group just LIKE to see what we are doing as engineering to differentiate us from those that "just code".

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