Engineers in U.S. vs. India

[Steve Furlong]

On Wed, 2004-01-07 at 18:36, Steve Mynott wrote:
> Jim Dixon wrote:

> > The term 'software engineer' is becoming less common in the States these
> > days.  I have watched the job title wax and wane for more than twenty
> > five years.  I think that it was most fashionable in the early 1980s.
> 
> Any Americans care to comment on this?

In the mid-1980s, the US Department of Defense, at the time the largest
software customer in the world, told its vendors that 10% (I think) of
their software development staff must be software engineers. Along came
the HR fairies with their magic wands and poof! almost all software
developers were software engineers.

The SE job title has ebbed and flowed, as Jim said. It means little
other than "programmer" in the US. As Jim said in another message,
almost all states restrict the use of the term "engineer" to those who
are licensed. But most don't really enforce that rule, so HR departments
are free to give their programming staff the glorious title. However,
contrary to Jim's statement, Texas does license software engineers. (See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering .) I don't know if any
other states license SEs.


Regards,
SRF, degreed Software Engineer (hooray, me)