As someone not in tech, I have no idea how to refer to my tech friends' jobs

The Picard Maneuver@lemmy.world to Programmer Humor@programming.dev – 884 points –
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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.

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

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.

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.

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.