Furthermore, tons of experienced working engineers outside of software don't have PEs. They're just not needed in a lot of contexts.
Edit: I'm referring mostly to the US. Licensing bodies in some places (perhaps including some US states) may say that only licensed engineers can be called/are engineers although the degree to which such strictures are followed will almost certainly vary. (I was told this was the case in Texas but there's no shortage of people in Texas who call themselves engineers but aren't PEs.)
Why should they get to do that? What do they know that I don’t?
I have a Master of Engineering degree but I’m not chartered - I’m still going to call myself an engineer no matter what anyone else thinks about it.
> You don't call yourself admiral right?
Because I’m not commanding a fleet. If I ever came to command a fleet I’d start calling myself admiral and as long as I’m actually doing that it’d be fine. If you’re doing engineering then you’re an engineer. Some of the best software engineers in the world have no professional qualification.
However, if I were to start practicing medicine in anything other than a first aid context or if I were to mislead people into thinking I was a certified medical professional, that's not allowed legally.
By contrast, while PEs are required especially for signing off on certain documents in civil engineering, there is not in general any requirement to have one to practice engineering in the general case. In fact, there's no requirement for an undergraduate degree.
> just anybody can call themselves engineer?
> It's not about titles.
It was about titles!
What you cant do is profess capital ‘E’ engineering work without running afoul of the law. That’s akin to practicing medicine without aboard certification, even if you claim to be a doctor because that’s what your degree says.
Degrees and licensed are related, but different in terms of the profession.
I honestly think that software "engineers" should be legally liable for the lives at stake though.
I'm not an accredited engineer, so I feel I have no right to the title.
It really annoys me that some manages at work call themselves Release Train Engineers.
Generally I think an engineer as someone that does design. Key part of that is some sort of analysis. That can be ad hoc, standards based, or formal.
Most of the time software feels like craft to me not engineering. Otherwise I'm more on the side that a license an engineer doesn't make. There are engineers without degrees designing and there are fat fuck PE's that just sign their name over and over for $300/hr.