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Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

> what qualifies a structural engineer? Licensing, a product of regulation.

No, licensing does not qualify a structural engineer. What qualifies a structural engineer is being willing to sign a legal document when, say, a bridge is completed, that says that they take legal responsibility for the bridge's safe functioning, and agree to be held legally liable if it fails. Licensing just means that, in addition to knowing enough about structural engineering to be willing to make such a legal commitment, they also have to get a piece of paper from the government before they can sign off legally as the structural engineer of record for a project.

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I'm sure I can find lots of people willing to sign such a document. Particularly if I pay them to.

I'm sure the people you are thinking of would change their minds pretty quickly once they saw the legal language that engineers of record for projects actually have to sign up to.

Not if they are starving. Starve now for sure, or starve later after getting paid - pretty easy choice.

People who are starving won't even get asked to be an engineer of record for the kind of project we're talking about. Do you think companies that build bridges go down to the local 7-Eleven and ask for structural engineers willing to sign off on the documents?

It's common practice to retain vagabonds that can sign legal papers. Any criminal entrepreneur knows this

How many such criminal entrepreneurs build bridges? Or buildings? Or other structures that engineers of record have to sign off on?

My estimate is zero. Which makes your comment irrelevant to this discussion.

Those engineers hire lawyers that retain such vagabonds when needed. You'd be suprised to know how many corrupt lawyers there are

If you haven't met any that's ok

> Those engineers hire lawyers that retain such vagabonds when needed.

The person signing the legal documents is the engineer himself, not some "vagabond" retained by a lawyer. Evidently you are not familiar with how signoffs by engineers of record for things like bridges are actually done.

A not so uncommon scam where I live is to create a company, do a few big transactions with it, gather debt towards the government in terms of wat taxes and the like, and then "sell" the company to someone extremely poor who becomes liable for the taxes.

The implication was that no credentials would be required if the person signing off on it was held liable, so a company could pick up anyone off the street and have them sign off

If licensing shouldn't matter, just the willingness to sign something, then everyone is a structural engineer.

During the housing bubble, they'd just hire temps to sign things: https://www.reuters.com/article/robosigning-plea-idUSL1E8ML0...

It seems like you're being deliberately obtuse. Willingness to sign a document that imposes strong legal obligations on you, and strong penalties if those obligations are not met, is hardly something everyone will have.

My argument, at least, is that absent licensing, there are plenty of people either desperate, or foolish enough to sign such a document. Not most people, or even a large minority, but enough.

Your original definition concerned whether one was "willing", not whether one would "get asked".

I was assuming that readers would apply at least a modicum of intelligence and common sense to what I posted, given the context of the overall discussion. Evidently, at least for some readers, I assumed too much.

Assuming they read it and really comprehend it. Plenty get fooled into signing away their life’s savings or get convinced to take the risk.

> Plenty get fooled into signing away their life’s savings or get convinced to take the risk.

We're not talking about a random person walking into a local bank and asking for a loan. We're talking about someone signing off as engineer of record for a project. The two cases are not at all comparable.

No. You’re wrong. You by all accounts appear to be in such a bubble that you can’t comprehend these things meaning less to other people than they do to you.

This reasoning is incredibly incredibly dangerous and there are countless very contemporary examples of it leading to a) exploitation and b) those well-to-do being let off the hook.

> there are countless very contemporary examples

I challenge you to give one. You evidently are not familiar with how signoffs by engineers of record are made for structures like bridges.

Yes, because threat of punishment stops all

> threat of punishment stops all

Threat of having your life and career absolutely ruined pretty much does, yes. The key is that the threat has to be believed. For things like signing off as an engineer of record on a project, yes, the threat is believable. For being an investment banker who cooks the books, the threat of being punished might not be so believable, no, particularly if the bank can be portrayed as "too big to fail". But that's not the kind of project we're talking about here.

But it could be similar. Maybe you won't be caught, maybe you won't receive the harshest punishment.

> it could be similar

You evidently are not familiar with how things like bridges get built and how signoffs by engineers of record are made. Yes, you'll get caught, and yes, you'll receive the harshest punishment.

Being a structural engineer is not the same thing as being a good one. There is nothing to stop.

Yeah, this is why people never commit fraud or smuggle drugs /s

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