Ask HN: Is Everyone an Engineer Now?

3•piratesAndSons•1h ago

Marketing engineer for marketing people, design engineer for designers, sanitation engineer for janitors — so by that logic, cashier engineer would be next for the people who ring you up at checkout. What is up with this title inflation? Why call yourself an engineer just because you write software? To me, engineers are people who build things and take full responsibility for them — designing a bridge where thousands of lives are in your hands, building an airplane engine, filtering a city's water supply. Not pressing keys on a machine.

Comments

appreciatorBus•51m ago

Same as it ever was...

In the 1700's, "executive" referred to a person or group holding supreme legal power

In the 1900's, "executive" described high ranking business people.

In the 2000's, a junior sales rep, 3 months out of high school, will be given the title of account executive.

throwaway86468•42m ago

zippyman55•22m ago

I really hesitated to use the term "ENGINEER" out of respect for those that really do work within the constraints such as quality of service, cost, safety, reliability, time, materials, and regulations. It was never a term I wanted to degrade and it was nice to point the group to the head engineer as opposed to everyone thinking they were engineers and their going about designing their own system when they were really just a smart administrator or technician. Not that I did not respect people using engineering principles, I just wanted to ensure people understood a respect for the actual engineers.

rvz•25m ago

No.

Two common key points about engineering is understanding and responsibility when issues happen. Knowing what to change and why and diagnosing the problem and confidently fixing it when the system goes wrong.

Anyone can play Microsoft Flight simulator.

Does that mean everyone is a qualified captain to fly a commercial plane full of passengers?

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