• scorpionix@feddit.de
    976·
    9 months ago

    Not engineer.

    At least here in Germany, engineer is a protected profession. Other than that: All of the above.

      • omgitsaheadcrab@sh.itjust.works
        541·
        9 months ago

        Yeah, same in the UK. Really annoyed me that the plumber, electrician… etc were all engineers. In Germany it’s as protected as calling yourself doctor, which ultimately affects how people view the profession and the salaries they command

        • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
          18·
          9 months ago

          I mean, it’s a protected term in Canada too but it doesn’t necessarily lead to higher salaries.

          My cousin who’s an electrician made about as much as I did as an electrical engineer, and I left electrical engineering to be a software developer because it paid more. Engineering paid more than being an electrical technician / designer, but not by a huge amount.

        • mumblerfish@lemmy.world
          4·
          9 months ago

          It does not only dictate your professional life/status in Germany, being a doctor, your social as well. Someone I know got a postdoc in germany, no luck finding a place to live until they started asking their german collegues to call and saying “doctor so-and-so is looking for an appartment”. So, he gets one. The guy has a very long full name, so the nametag the landlord is gonna put on the postbox is way to long, but if you cut off the part where it says he is a doctor, it would fit. He insists to cut that part away, the landlord just refuses, says fuck your name and person basically, and cuts off part of his last name instead. Saying you are a doctor gets you first in fucking everything (maybe not lufthansa, then they just say ‘senators’ or something). Extremely class divided social society that.

        • Damage@feddit.it
          1·
          9 months ago

          Yeah it’s difficult for me to name my title in English 'cause the word doesn’t exist. I went to a technical high school, not university. (Not college!)

      • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
        4·
        9 months ago

        I believe job titles specifically are(were?) considered in exempt / non-exempt status for overtime.

        Why Administrator is in a lot of titles also.

    • Jrockwar@feddit.uk
      171·
      9 months ago

      Hmmm. But all the people around me working in software studied multiple years in an Engineering field. In my case, I studied a 5-year industrial engineering and two masters afterwards; I feel very comfortable wearing the “software engineer” or more accurately “robotics engineer” badge.

      • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
        25·
        9 months ago

        During the 2008 recession, a lot of Uber drivers had engineering degrees. I guess we should start calling Uber drivers engineers too.

        • Jrockwar@feddit.uk
          10·
          9 months ago

          No, that’s precisely the opposite of my point. If you drive an Uber, you’re an Uber driver. People are “CEO” or “Judge” despite nobody having a CEO or Judge degree. Your profession is what you do, not what you happened to study in your teens to get there.

          • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
            1·
            9 months ago

            I understand your point now and I agree. Your colleagues that studied engineering became programmers. Why do people treat this as if that’s bad? It’s a beautiful profession.

            • Jrockwar@feddit.uk
              1·
              9 months ago

              I don’t think it’s bad, in fact I wonder the same. These are my colleagues because it’s the same path I took - I now work developing self-driving cars (I slowly transitioned from aerospace to manufacturing automation to robotics) and it’s the most rewarding job I’ve ever had, and it feels very much like engineering. I don’t care if I’m not a “manufacturing engineer” anymore; I really like my job and I like my title to reflect somewhat accurately what I do, but that’s the extent I care about it.

    • Gladaed@feddit.de
      8·
      9 months ago

      If you studied a technical science and do coding for that you may be allowed to be called ingenieur.

    • explodicle@local106.comEnglish
      5·
      9 months ago

      How come they don’t count? They’re figuring out how the machines should work, for money. That’s engineering, right? (I’m an American mechanical engineer)

      • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
        6·
        9 months ago

        In Canada you have to be qualified and licensed to call yourself an engineer. There are people who can use the title “software engineer”, but it’s not the majority of people working in development.

    • rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de
      4·
      9 months ago

      Softwareingenieur darf man sich nennen, wenn man ein mathematisch-naturwissenschaftliches Fach studiert hat, wo Informatik dazugehört. Somit ist Software Engineer oder Softwareingenieur die korrekte Berufsbezeichnung für alle mit einem Bachelor/Master oder höher in Informatik.

    • pwalker@discuss.tchncs.de
      2·
      9 months ago

      That is not entirely true. It’s a bit more complicated. Yes it is protected since the 1970s but it’s more of an academic title. You needed to study something that is “mainly” of technological or scientific nature. Basically befire the Bologna reform every student in Tec. Unis/FHs did get the title Diplom-Ingenieur. So the engineer part was literally part of your degree. This of course also true in case you studied IT. So yes there are many who call themselves IT engineers also in Germany. However it’s more of a philosophical question how much software development is actually engineering or rather craftsmanship.

    • Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee
      1·
      9 months ago

      Here in portugal too. But there is a specific engineering field which is informatic engineering? Software engineer essentially

  • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
    81·
    9 months ago

    I’m in tech and “computer programmer” has always sounded to me like a grandma phrase. Like how all gaming consoles are referred to as “the Nintendo” or “the game station”.

    • Trailblazing Braille Taser@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      13·
      9 months ago

      That’s funny, plain “programmer” would be my preferred term if it weren’t for the fact that non-tech folks think it sounds like menial work. I’ve landed on “software engineer” because that’s what my employer calls me and other people seem to understand a little bit, too.

      • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
        10·
        9 months ago

        I was hired with the official title “software engineer,” then I was noted in all unofficial org charts as a “SE/DE” (software engineer/data engineer), and recently my boss announced that I have had my title officially changed to “data engineer”. My job functions have not changed the entire time I’ve been here. I write Python, SQL, KQL and Pyspark scripts and have to fuck around with Azure architecture sometimes. So there’s not always clear delineation between these terms, anyway.

        • odium@programming.dev
          4·
          9 months ago

          Lol, are you me? Job application said software engineer. 3 months after I was hired, it changed to data engineer with no changes to the work I do. I wasn’t even notified, just noticed on a random day that the role on my profile on Teams had changed. I also do Python, SQL, and Pyspark scripts, but use AWS instead.

        • Feathercrown@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          9 months ago

          I was hired as a Developer and a month or two in they changed our titles to Software Engineer because “It sounds better.” I’d have to say I agree!

      • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
        52·
        9 months ago

        Here in Canada you can’t call yourself an engineer unless you are a qualified and licensed engineer. So most people have to call themselves “developer”. When you see someone calling themselves a software engineer it should mean something.

  • sunbytes@lemmy.world
    56·
    9 months ago
    • Viewport engineer.
    • Browser-space technician.
    • Microsoft painter-decorator.
    • Inferior decorator.
    • He-who-responds (on the bugs channel).
    • Scope denier.
    • Manager disappointer.
  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.caEnglish
    392·
    9 months ago

    Honestly, the longer I work in tech, the less confidence I have in anyone’s title. Even searching for a job, different companies have different ideas of what, pretty much everything is…

    I’m more on the side of IT support (sysadmin/netadmim/systems engineer/network engineer/second/third level support/engineer/whatever tf)… And even looking for a job for myself, it’s a nightmare… Even mundane details about the job are messed up. I saw a posting for a “remote support technician”, by their definition, this was “remote” as in, not from an office. The job was on-site support for remote sites. I don’t even think it was an IT position, more like mechanical maintenance IIRC. So you were “remote” aka, not at their office, doing support (for something not electronic), as a “technician”.

    It’s bullshit all the way down.

    When I was last looking for a job someone commented that I had “only” applied to x positions in y weeks, when their search for (some vague title related to my usual employment) had z search results, where z was more than 10 times x. I didn’t bother replying but I couldn’t help but think, did you look at any of those postings? I literally had a search filter for jobs that was “CCNA” (Cisco certified) and I literally had administrative assistant positions coming up… Those are little better than secretarial jobs. I know because I clicked on it because maybe, just maybe they meant an assistant to the systems administrator, but no, it was exactly what it said on the tin.

    This is my frustration with IT. There are zero standards for what a job is. Developer? Is it software or something related to construction? Engineer? Are you examining the structure of something or building out IT solutions? Admin? Office admin? Systems admin? Department admin? There’s too many “admin” related jobs… “Support”? Supporting what exactly? Am I programming switchports, or is this some other kind of bullshit support.

    That’s not even getting into all the actual IT jobs that are clearly out in left field. Sysadmin jobs that require years of experience with an application that’s extremely specific to one industry; an application you could learn likely in a matter of days, which isn’t very complicated, but your resume goes in a bin if you don’t have some very specific certification and a number of years of experience with the related app… I know that because I’ve applied to such positions and didn’t even get a courtesy email telling me to pound sand.

    Which takes me to another point, you don’t get rejected. You get ghosted. They don’t want you? Fine, tell me that. You don’t even have to give me a reason, just some copy pasta about pursuing other candidates. That way I will know to not expect anything further, and keep trying. I mean, I’m going to keep trying no matter what, but still…

    The whole job market is a hellscape.

    Then, I can turn my attention to the pointless titles people have, which often don’t mean shit outside of your specific workplace. “Lead customer success technician” … Ok, wtf is that? What does any of that mean? Are you technical in the sense of working with information technology? Or is it one of the DOZENS of other “technical” things? Everyone is a technician and everyone is an engineer now. Those terms used to mean something. Now they’re just keywords to blast your resume with to try to match some AI filter so you can get a call. If you don’t play the game, your left behind.

    I feel bad for all the professional engineers out there who hold degrees in real engineering. Now anyone, everyone and their mother is calling themselves some kind of engineer. It’s all word salad and I hate it.

    • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
      6·
      9 months ago

      The reality is also, that development is so extremely diverse, that it’s hard to find umbrella-enough terms to describe a job.

      For example, I’m a senior software developer on paper.

      I’m not senior, not even 10 years job experience. But I seem to be rather good at what I’m doing, so I’m a senior now.

      I’m also hardly writing any code. I talk to customers about what they want their software to do, I talk to management about how many people I need, I review pull requests, I talk to junior devs about their problems, etc, etc. Maybe 10% of my time is actual code. But what title other than “developer” should I have?

      • Sailing7@lemmy.ml
        2·
        9 months ago

        A few more titles that you will hate, but actually describe your role. You are in no sense just a senior developer.

        You are an

        • Architect
        • Solution Architect
        • Project Manager and Team Leader
        • Service Manager

        Which one fits best, you have to decide. But i would put this up on my resume if i had your responsibilities.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
          2·
          9 months ago

          Yeah, I struggle with that.

          • I’m not allowed to be called an Architect because the Lead Architect only allows product people in the role, however I’m equivalent rank.
          • I spend way too much time doing project management, but I despise that
          • I don’t lead a specific team or have people but I set requirements for engineering and sometime borrow people from teams
          • I’m in the Quality Engineering organization but don’t do QA
          • some people think I’m a Build Engineer, and I do set some of their requirements
          • some think I’m AppSec, and I do try to fill their gaps and apply their work to the organization.

          Recently, maybe DevSecOps sounds most accurate, and I avoid talking rank so I don’t piss off that Prima Donna

        • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
          1·
          9 months ago

          It’s not a huge project (3-4 devs, including myself), there’s simply not enough to do for a dedicated architect. PM and SM are done by dedicated roles, but as a lead dev, I obviously have to play translator quite a bit.

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        Maybe “software producer”? (a term I’ve never seen used anywhere but that sort of makes sense when you think about what a movie producer does, for example)

    • Dashi@lemmy.world
      3·
      9 months ago

      In my career i have gone from Systems Engineer to professional services to Profesional services team lead to Senior Systems administrator to now just Systems administrator. All doing basically the same IT stuff at progressively higher levels other than the team lead part.

      When i was looking for my last job i applied for a remote admin job and experienced exactly what you described. I was on the third interview and was asked when i was going to move to the area and if i wanted a relocation allowance as part of the offer. Uhh what? To them a remote admin was an administrator that went to remote sites. What a waste of my time

    • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      9·
      9 months ago

      My job title has changed 5x more than my actual job. I honestly don’t even know what my current title is.

      I wonder how many man-hours (and at what average salary) has been spent deciding on title changes that have literally zero impact at my company. I’m sure every change involves meetings full of highly-paid executives.

      • OpenStars@startrek.websiteEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        “I (want to keep my job and therefore I) AGREE WITH YOU 100%”

        They collect the big bucks, the rest of us can suck dirt - barely not able to afford a home, food, medical care, etc. Oh wait, sorry, I meant “YES SIR/MAM!”

  • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
    20·
    9 months ago

    I’m a Senior Software Engineer, outside of countries where engineer is a protected title. I’m also a Beep-Boop Technician, Specialized Generalist (not Full-Stack since I have mostly succeeded in avoiding JS, until this afternoon), Problem Fixer, Technical Diplomat, Cat Herder (sometimes a tech lead), and The-Mean-Guy-That-Rejects-Commits-When-There-Are-API-Calls-Made-Without-TLS-Encryption-And-Hardcoded-Secrets (infosec likes me but always seems genuinely confused at a dev not fighting them).