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Comment by tamersalama | Hacker News Reader

The land where “Software Engineers” can’t be named Engineers.

99% of "software engineering" is about as much "engineering" as laying out and installing the plumbing for a house or smallish apartment building. To the extent that it's more challenging, it's mostly because we're running around trying to hammer nails with screwdrivers and cut copper pipes with butter knives and constantly changing standard pipe & fitting diameters for no good reason.

Web plumbing

Well, we aren't really, yet.

If we were actually like other engineers, everyone would know Coq. Can you imagine building bridges the way many companies do code?

My job title in Canada is Software Engineer and it was also that in the National Occupation Classification I used for immigration:

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...

Canada is in a strange moment where most professional engineering bodies are taking the position that any use of the term 'engineer' by a non-professional engineer (someone with a P.Eng degree) is illegal but US tech companies, which have a lot of influence into Canada's market and aren't affected by the same laws, don't really care. This means it is often used in Canada despite the position taken by the engineering bodies.

The law is sort of vague on it. It says that you aren't allowed to mislead people into thinking you are a professional engineer or use terms that would lead people to think you are a professional engineer if you are not. Whether or not 'software engineer' does this can depend on your viewpoint and whether you're building software for web stacks or for airplane control. But the engineering bodies have tried to make examples of companies or individuals that don't have big enough legal resources to want to go to court over it.

IMO I understand the professional bodies wanting to ensure nobody is misrepresenting themselves as licensed P.Eng holders but claiming a monopoly on the engineering mindset is a bit of gatekeeping and nothing else.

P.Eng is not a degree. You get it by writing a pass/fail ethics exam for the local regulatory board after completing an actual Engineering degree (BASc/BEng), and paying yearly dues.

P.Eng is not required for most engineering activities. One notable exception being civil engineers, since there's so much signing off on blueprints for infrastructure.

Yah, by 'p.eng degree' I meant 'one of the degrees that qualify for a p.eng license'. Thanks for clarifying.

The engineering bodies categorically take the position that you can't use the word 'engineer' anywhere in your title, say that you do engineering, or do engineering under their definition of it without their license. See this recent letter for example [0] or their FAQ on it [1]

[0]: https://engineerscanada.ca/sites/default/files/2022-08/2022-... [1]: https://engineerscanada.ca/become-an-engineer/use-of-profess...

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