Are I an software engineer?

[Marauder2003]

In my mainframe career I:

Wrote and modified COBOL code
Wrote and modified Assembler code
Wrote and modified JCL
Designed applications
Did SYSGENs of operating systems

Was I, in the current lingo, a software engineer?

[3rd_gear]

If you just modified the code and wrote a few snippets, then I say NO.

If you wrote code from scratch and was responsible for the architecture, then I say YES.

[ibanezfoo]

You can call yourself whatever you want. I hate coding but have been forced to work in Assembler, C/C++, C#, Python, Perl, etc and am really just a nerd.

[JohnnyMtn]

From a principle pov, I would agree with 3rd Gear. If you are just modifying code then you are not. Engineer implies that you are designing a system and are then implementing the software to create that system.

But from a business/industry pov, yes, you are a software engineer. The industry over the past 5-10 years tends to call anyone involved with the IT process as an ?engineer?. I see software engineers, architecture engineers, security engineers, data engineers, QA engineers, systems engineers, etc. when all of these roles just involve IT people doing IT things.

[ibanezfoo]

From a principle pov, I would agree with 3rd Gear. If you are just modifying code then you are not. Engineer implies that you are designing a system and are then implementing the software to create that system.

But from a business/industry pov, yes, you are a software engineer. The industry over the past 5-10 years tends to call anyone involved with the IT process as an ?engineer?. I see software engineers, architecture engineers, security engineers, data engineers, QA engineers, systems engineers, etc. when all of these roles just involve IT people doing IT things.

Unless you work with real licensed engineers then calling ones self an engineer would get you laughed out of the building if not punched in the face.

[arrix]

If you make architectural decisions then you're an engineer otherwise you're just a programmer.

[Dan_Eastvale]

What was your official job title? And degree major?

[Marauder2003]

Me? The OP? AAS from DeVry tech in 1969.

I asked the question because I see the term engineer being applied to the software industry these days. Based on what I did for 40 years I think I would qualify for the term as it is being used now.

I am retired for 3880 days. Quite honestly I don?t care what you call me. It was a tongue in cheek question.

What was your official job title? And degree major?

[sigstroker]

I would say the assembler work probably was an engineer. To me, 3rd, 4th gen, and o/s language stuff like JCL, no. Several years ago you had to be writing embedded or o/s code, as in writing Windows, etc, code to call yourself an engineer. Coding apps or database code, as in you worked on the Oracle or SQL Server kernel, counts too.

If all it takes is designed and written from scratch, I was an engineer in my first fulltime job.

FWIW in my long and not quite distinguished career, very few people with computer science or software engineering degrees are actually doing software engineering work. It's mostly people with non-software engineering degrees or high school diplomas. Most of the guys I knew at Sybase had EE's. The most impressive work I've seen were by guys with no degrees at all. They programmed realtime systems that did cancer treatments with linear accelerators, and observatory telescopes.

[ibanezfoo]

I would say the assembler work probably was an engineer. To me, 3rd, 4th gen, and o/s language stuff like JCL, no. Several years ago you had to be writing embedded or o/s code, as in writing Windows, etc, code to call yourself an engineer. Coding apps or database code, as in you worked on the Oracle or SQL Server kernel, counts too.

If all it takes is designed and written from scratch, I was an engineer in my first fulltime job.

FWIW in my long and not quite distinguished career, very few people with computer science or software engineering degrees are actually doing software engineering work. It's mostly people with non-software engineering degrees or high school diplomas. Most of the guys I knew at Sybase had EE's. The most impressive work I've seen were by guys with no degrees at all. They programmed realtime systems that did cancer treatments with linear accelerators, and observatory telescopes.

I've noticed that too. One of my buddies has a degree in robotics engineering (stuff like the robots that build cars) but instead runs a couple software and cloud app companies. He's one of those weirdos that can learn a new coding language and be proficient with it in like 24 hours. Another has a masters in radio engineering and writes code all day instead. On the flip side the folks I know that went to school and got IT degrees instead do things like construction management.