Hacker News Reader

Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

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?

View on HN

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com