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Comment by mikewarot | Hacker News Reader

I would simply not use the title anywhere. If I got an interview or offer, I would point out the problem with the job title at that time.

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I think people would find that really weird. Potentially "bad culture fit" weird.

Interviews are two way; if it really annoys somebody to be called an engineer when they aren’t licensed or doing what they think of as engineering work, then… I guess it is a legitimate bad culture fit, right? If that’s the hill somebody wants to die on, might as well get it out of the way!

IMO — I’d prefer not to be called engineer but we live in a capitalist world — if someone is willing to pay enough they can call me whatever they want.

People are free to attempt to break from society and never use money because of some crazy SovCit conspiracy too. But this was proposed as advice and presented as kind of some correct thing to do so it is quite available for criticism. It is a very strange, mercurial position that no one should really follow if they want to achieve goals discussed in the OP article, such as being financially successful in one’s career.

You would point that out to a serious, billion dollar company that is interviewing your for a software engineer position? Really? Maybe you don’t realize how bad that sounds. That is actually pretty silly; it would be like you claiming to have secret knowledge or some kind of legal training superiority to a companies that employs or otherwise retains the services of an army of top tier attorneys.

You are free to personally think that software developers should not be called engineers, but you are simply factually incorrect if you are telling an employer they are in legal trouble for calling their unlicensed employees software engineers. There is no legal issue, and the industry as a whole has clearly decided it is not a problem with using the job title.

This is absolute madness. Just accept the game for what it is. If they wanna call software developers "software engineers", what do you have to gain by swimming uphill?

The irony is that it also applies to electrical and mechanical engineers that very often do not hold or intend to obtain a P.E.

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