You could take it up with Cisco, who have been certifying "Network Engineers" for decades.
I get your complaint; my father is a fully qualified and slightly/weirdly eminent electronics engineer (and IEEE member), so from a young age I've been made aware of the sanctity of the term in that context.
But the term has been used in other contexts for a long time, and most people understand the distinction.
It's not a hill worth dying on. Best save your energy for more important battles.
Yes. You may not like it. I may not even like it but everyone from people who drive trains to technicians in lots of areas use the title.
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.
It's not about titles. It's about what you're allowed to do/practice. I can certainly call myself doctor without an MD or other medical degree for which the title is customarily used. I might even do so if I had a PhD. I suppose I could do so in any case although people would think it strange if I didn't actually have a degree the same way they'd think it quite odd if I insisted on being called Your Highness.
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.
In all fairness, you may be operating under an industrial exemption if you are doing legitimate engineering work and not even realize it.
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.
Addendum: can someone tell me what's wrong with using software developer as a description of what we do?, why do we need to borrow other professions titles?, it's because we want more respect?
I would guess that's the short version of it. I would surmise that 'engineer' basically means to do a hell of a lot more rigorous logic testing of the software and hardware products and would therefore also get paid more. Then comes along these fancy little startups who want to hire away that talent but don't fully understand that the word 'engineer' is a protected word in but do know the context basically suggests more responsibility. So then they make leading roles 'engineers' and supporting roles 'developers'. Then it snowballs from there because software isn't _nearly_ as rigorous as a civil engineer or mechanical engineer where the word means that you're legally responsible for the lives at stake.
I honestly think that software "engineers" should be legally liable for the lives at stake though.
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.
Added: So, basically the grandparent registered on HN so they could leave comments about how people without PEs shouldn't be allowed to call themselves engineers.
