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Comment by baxuz | Hacker News Reader

Depends.

In the context of being an engineer - it's not. A real engineer's licence can be revoked due to misconduct, is issued by a governing body and carries some weight.

Software developers can call themselves engineers or even Code-Alchemists, but it carries zero weight.

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Apparently, the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (the board that regulates other engineering fields in the USA, such as civil engineering) used to offer a Professional Engineer (PE) exam for software engineering, but it was dropped in 2019 due to lack of participation and bad prospects for increased participation.

https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-engineerin...

I think it’s worth separating the question of “do software engineers actually carry professional liability or have their designs independently reviewed” from the question of “is software development work sufficiently consequential and verifiable to warrant professional liability and certification requirements?"

To me, the answer to the first is obviously no and the second is obviously yes.

I think that is an argument for the term rather than against. A SWE SHOULD be held responsible for the things they make and the impacts it causes. Additionally, so should PMs and CEOs but heyyyy. I guess the big issue is that it is easy to place blame in the case of a bridge failing...but much harder when a system products mass suicides.

Who made you the Grand High Arbiter of language use?

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