Engineers in U.S. vs. India

[Steve Mynott]

Jim Dixon wrote:

> The term 'engineer' is far from precise; in the UK most people who work
> with tools can be called engineers but people who write software generally
> are NOT called engineers. There are further complications: for example, in

I have had jobs as a "software engineer" in the UK and since the dot com 
bubble this hasn't been an uncommon job title.

The UK tends to follow US fashions very closely importing in titles like 
CEO and CTO and the term "software engineer" is no different.

As for your comments that "my impression is that India has a few 
excellent institutions and a vast number of unbelievably bad schools" I 
suspect this is true but applies equally to the UK and USA and indeed 
any country with a university system.  Neither is graduating from a top 
engineering school such as Stanford any automatic guarantee of quality 
as anyone who has worked with these people knows.

India has an excellent tradition in mathematics and some of the best 
software engineers I have worked with in the UK have been Indian 
graduates, since it's the most enterprising and highly qualified ones 
which tend to emigrate.

O Reilly Associates recognise the importance of the Indian market by 
suppplying special low priced editions of their books to the Indian 
market.  They are occasionally available as "grey imports" in the UK.

-- 
1024/D9C69DF9 Steve Mynott <steve at tightrope.demon.co.uk>