Lots of "professional" cartels in Canada are granted power. We still call our engineers in Canada software engineers. No one has expressed concern so far.
While I mostly agree with you, my Canadian Mechanical Engineer father will gladly express his concern.
I've never been able to use the phrase "software engineer", despite having 20+ years of software experience because I was raised to believe that Engineers have silver rings, engineering degrees and professional standing.
We let theology professors call themselves doctor. The definition of engineer is "a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or public works." Are we arguing that software is not a machine or in the case of social media, a public work? Many machines and public works are privately owned at that. Further, there is regulation for software and engineers are held accountable to it.
A business can title a person as an engineer with limited complaints, a person cannot market themselves as an engineer.
Here in Texas, we had a licensure board for Software Engineering for a minute, though it was eventually killed by our Sunset Commission, because almost no one was interested in it (sadly).
This is a nothingburger. Here is the quote that matters:
> Unless someone is licensed with a provincial or territorial engineering regulator, they cannot use the title engineer, or any variation.
So, you can legally call yourself a software engineer if you have your title. There are laws like this in most countries regarding medical doctors. This prevents Doctor of Acupuncture from appearing.
You can call yourself a software engineer. You just need to have qualified with the professional body in charge of engineering. Like, say, a doctor or a lawyer.
Software lawyer sounds like you're a lawyer with a specialization. But ultimately I think it shouldn't come down to the specifics of what you call yourself since that's something people can weasel out of, but rather if you're communicating that you provide professional legal services.
as does "software engineer", but the title could be used in the US by someone who graduated a code boot camp, and doesn't know any engineering principles.
Feel free to just drop the "software" part, since it's a mouthful, and just call yourself a "lawyer." What's the difference anyway, we're all just typing words and numbers into computers at the end of the day.
Programmers write the code, though. A better name might be "software legislator." Given that lots of us work on top of a giant, partially-understood heap of frameworks and libraries, that might actually be a more appropriate name than Software Engineer.
What about writing code for decentralized contracts, since contracts are lawyery but I’m writing software and have no formal legal background or credentials? Surely no one would object to me using the term “lawyer” for that!
I dunno actually, do you need to be a lawyer to write a contract? I think anyone can do it, right? You just might screw yourself over by missing an edge case or writing an unenforceable contract.
> Claiming to be an engineer without being licensed is against the law. Titles such as Professional Engineer, Professional Licensee (engineering), P. Eng., P.L. (Eng.), or any title including the word engineer or a related abbreviation can only be used by those who are licensed.
Technically, it is not illegal.
> There are several places where the use of engineer is often used improperly. They include:
Software or data engineer: Unless someone is licensed with a provincial or territorial engineering regulator, they cannot use the title engineer, or any variation. This applies even if the title is assigned by the employer. Alternative titles can include:
> Every person who is not a holder of a licence or a temporary licence and who,
> (a) uses the title “professional engineer” or “ingénieur” or an abbreviation or variation thereof as an occupational or business designation;
> (a.1) uses the title “engineer” or an abbreviation of that title in a manner that will lead to the belief that the person may engage in the practice of professional engineering;
> (b) uses a term, title or description that will lead to the belief that the person may engage in the practice of professional engineering; or
> (c) uses a seal that will lead to the belief that the person is a professional engineer,
> is guilty of an offence and on conviction is liable for the first offence to a fine of not more than $10,000 and for each subsequent offence to a fine of not more than $25,000.
Uh oh, I just told my urologist I was a Software Engineer. From my experience over the last 15 years, no one cares. I'm sure it matters to the courts, though.
Professionalization is part of it, but not the whole part. The main part was to manage the number of members. Also, this professionalization greatly decreases the propensity for bridges collapsing due to negligence/malpractice but does not completely prevent it. [miami pedestrian bridge, galloping gurtie, KC hyatt walkway, genoa viaduto].
And the public as well. If I hire a lawyer, I have a signal that they probably have (at least) a rudimentary understanding of law, and are licensed to practice law. If I see a medical doctor, I know they have a degree and are licensed to practice medicine. If these people wind up negligent or put people in harm, I know that they have the chance of losing their license to practice law or medicine.
If I need an engineer, I should have at least some assurance that they know what they are doing, and that they aren't going to act unethically or against my best interest. I should also have some assurance that the fact they hold a license, means that they (probably) haven't been negligent, or harmful with their practice.
This must be enforced only on an adhoc basis when complaints are filed, or only in certain jurisdictions.
In BC, I have worked as a "Software Engineer" for 15 years with just a Bachelors and no engineering license, including for large tech companies. It's on my CV/LinkedIn. SE is the standard title internally and externally, it's on job postings, it's used everywhere.
You can do that, but you can't sign off on any documents as an engineer. You also won't eligible to write your P. Eng exam unless you've worked under a licensed engineer.
If this is true, it's changed in the last decade. I was able to write the engineering exam right out of school to become an "engineer in training". Becoming a full P. Eng required experience, but no exam.
Court case: In an oral decision delivered on November 26, 2019, Associate Chief Justice Nielsen of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench ordered an injunction against an individual who was using the title “Software Engineer” in his online profiles, despite the fact he was not an APEGA member. Associate Chief Justice Nielsen found that by holding himself out to the public as a “software engineer”, this individual could by implication lead a member of the public to conclude he is a professional engineer, licensee or permit holder with APEGA. This was a violation of s. 3(1)(a)(ii) of the Engineers and Geoscience Professions Act. Associate Chief Justice Nielsen granted the injunction order sought by APEGA and awarded costs to APEGA for the contested application.
Court case: On 10 March 2020, the Quebec Superior Court (2020 QCCS 1465) upheld a lower court ruling, finding an individual guilty of improperly using the French abbreviation “ing.” In e-mails sent to clients and colleagues, and on a résumé sent to a prospective employer. The Court found that the use of “ing.” by an individual not registered with Quebec’s governing body would induce a reasonable person to conclude that the individual is indeed an engineer. As a result, the individual was found guilty of 4 counts of improper use of title. Leave to appeal was denied by the Quebec Court of Appeal on 5 June 2020 (2020 QCCA 730).
My point was more that the majority of public job descriptions use "Software Engineer" as the title. The vast majority of engineers I have ever worked with call themselves Software Engineers.
And one of the main examples in the article is an injunction against an individual for using that title online?
Possibly, but a bureaucratic organization in Canada would not be a proper place to determine qualifications for software engineering. They are constantly behind the times in terms of testing, latest technology, and best practices.
To balance a little bit the other comments where everyone is saying it has no actual implication:
My previous company (one of the GAFAM) had to change the title of everyone to Software Developer after years of arguing with the local engineering body.
And if you happened to leave "engineer" on your Linkedin profile, people from said body were actually regularly checking profiles and directly messaging us with threat of legal actions against us personally.
I have a MSc in CS, just not from Canada. The only way to be able to use that title, is to pay a membership fee to the association(? cartel?) of engineering.
Is a fee sufficient?
(If so, surprised the company didn't just pay it). I thought in addition to other things you need to put in some time supervised by a licensed engineer (kind of an apprentice).
> To practice engineering and use the title engineer (or any variation), you must be licensed by the engineering regulator for the province/ territory where the title is being used. Regulation minimizes risks to public safety and ensures that these activities are conducted by licensed engineers who are held to high professional and ethical standards that require them to work in the public interest.
I'm sure these bodies can provide evidence that people who have paid their membership dues and been bestowed the title of "engineer" write safer and better code, right?
Here's a perfect example of such regulatory corruption – https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-wins-traffic-li.... Someone ran tests and showed that Oregon's red light cameras were flawed. The state in turn fined him for calling himself an "engineer" without a license and barred him from speaking about the problem. Thankfully the supreme court put an end to it pretty quick.
Licensed engineering is an anachronism for most things. Because a licensed engineer put his seal on a drawing isn't good enough.
Modern engineering is all about standards and process.
Reminds me. One of the reasons California has high building costs and lack of construction workers is they went way overboard on contractors licensing.
>I'm sure these bodies can provide evidence that people who have paid their membership dues and been bestowed the title of "engineer" write safer and better code, right?
Having an engineering license means that you know the person when through a full college degree and/or could prove they have enough experience to compensate for it (not that easy btw). In Canada, it's not enough to just get a "major" in something related to engineering, they are a completely separate category of programs that have 1.5x the number of credits (>120 instead of 90) and are roughly equivalent to getting a Bachelor + master in other disciplines (it's 4 years, full-time, with full-time internships and/or classes during summers. 5 years if you want your summer off)
It also means that they can lose that title if they fuck up badly and get reported. You can't change the name of the company or create a new online account to escape that bad rep. The tone of the discussion is completely different when the person being pressured to sign something they shouldn't by a manager is risking their entire career over it.
Asking for an engineering stamp on something means that you know a specific person will be personally responsible for it. They can't get out of it with a cute letter about how they will investigate and take proper actions for the future.
There's something to be said about separating out engineering from development. As someone who went through the rigmarole of Canada's engineering test (though I never formally adopted the title of engineering because of the reporting requirements), there's something to be said of how considerate and thoughtful "engineering" is.
To become an engineer in Canada, you need to learn and commit to understanding in full every major engineering disaster in the country in the last 100 years, and how a failure in your duty as an engineer can actually kill people.
I feel like we could split software engineering from software development and gain a lot in our industry. Not all development needs to be engineering, but some absolutely does.
It makes sense why there's no software engineering then. If a requirement would be to have to learn about every software engineering disaster in the last 10 years, let alone the last 100 years, no one would have time to finish the course.
If we count disasters as those involving loss of life, I'm pretty sure we did learn about Therac-25 [1], one of Canada's major software disasters resulting in actual deaths.
We still treat documentation as a third class citizen.
We still allow stakeholders to pressure at the cost of long term security and sanity.
Important and rigid business rules, the most obvious candidates for automated tests, still go untested.
Access to critical parts is still open and backups are lacking. You can probably do a lot of damage without any malicious intent in many places if you're not careful.
I can go on. Funny thing is, these things still happen in companies which try to adhere to some kind of outside standard. Most CS classes talk about security vulnerabilities and cancelled software projects costing millions, but never go in depth. Even our research is lacking.
What we learned is no one cares until the costs are higher than the gains, excepting a few critical fields I'd wager 99% of software "engineers" will never step foot in.
This. Management does not care. Does the market care? In spite of examples like the Therac disaster, the people in charge do not try to learn about what it'd take to make software more truly reliable.
In the early part of my career, I (and many of my friends) invested significant amounts of our time learning and pushing PL/T because the way things were going:
- Things are toys before they become tools. Early word processors were toys util they replaced typewriters.
- As the tools become more important, they will become more mainstream. Requirements will increase, e.g. that they be more reliable, that they become more usable.
- We now have designers in tech, indicating that the market cares about usability.
- There is still no formal verification of software, just "tests" which are applied in varying degrees of completeness.
To rely on "testing" is fine for a lot of consumer applications, but when I briefly worked in medical devices, we used C++. We did not hire a specialist with experience in Coq. Similarly when I worked with medical data.
I'll be quite blunt and cynical about it. Don't blame the software "engineers" / developers / whatever you want to call us. One of my friends actually went back to school to do research on this stuff, but I'm pretty sure he made a pittance compared to the friends who worked on the like button at Facebook. The market doesn't care. Call me a software designer if you like, I'll take the fat paycheck after spending the entire early part of my career trying to make things reliable, only to be slotted into the same "tech bro" category by a society that doesn't care.
I don't think each civil engineer studies every bridge that's ever collapsed. Generally this sort of thing is handled by looking at case studies that represent particular failure modes.
They did say major, not all engineering disasters.
At university, we were required to take a computer scientists & the society course, which software development disasters and ethics were the main part of the course. The Therac-25 case is a timeless classic, but there's others too. All software engineers should learn about past failures.
You don't need to know about every disaster, but even just the Therac-25, the Mars Climate Orbiter, or Knight Capital would cover a fairly wide variety of root causes and real-world consequences.
1) You would have to pay these real engineers with licenses more for this to make sense. Currently most jobs that even make mention of this requirement pay well under what the software development equivalent would make
2) Companies don't like to hire "Real" engineers wherever possible because like all bureaucracy, sometimes they prevent projects moving forward. Companies are incentivized to employ the bare minimum of licensed individuals to sign off on the cheaper and faster work of the unlicensed proletariat. and pressure is put on the licensed to rubber stamp things.
3) I have found a lot of the courses in engineering school about ethics etc to be extremely rubber stamp/"mandatory safety training" ish, just like the dumb what's a stop sign test at the DMV. I doubt people en masse remember what they learn. I see it as a complex ruse to make people do the equivalent of sign a legal document saying "I accept the terms of this agreement and have the capacity to do so", more of "something that can be taken away if bad things happen" than "something to prevent bad things from happening"
> 1) You would have to pay these real engineers with licenses more for this to make sense. Currently most jobs that even make mention of this requirement pay well under what the software development equivalent would make
> 2) Companies don't like to hire "Real" engineers wherever possible because like all bureaucracy, sometimes they prevent projects moving forward. Companies are incentivized to employ the bare minimum of licensed individuals to sign off on the cheaper and faster work of the unlicensed proletariat. and pressure is put on the licensed to rubber stamp things.
These are reasons why companies might not want to hire engineers, but also reason why we might not want to do business with those sorts of companies. The fact that lots of companies seem to have gotten away with this stance seems to indicate a failure somewhere.
> 3) I have found a lot of the courses in engineering school about ethics etc to be extremely rubber stamp/"mandatory safety training" ish, just like the dumb what's a stop sign test at the DMV. I doubt people en masse remember what they learn. I see it as a complex ruse to make people do the equivalent of sign a legal document saying "I accept the terms of this agreement and have the capacity to do so", more of "something that can be taken away if bad things happen" than "something to prevent bad things from happening"
Yeah kinda. In defense of this sort of thing, going on to get a professional engineering license is definitely not something that all engineering students do. Many go on to do jobs that are more like programmers or technicians, right? Maybe the typical engineering degree should be renamed to pre-enginnering or something, but something tells me getting universities on board with that will be... challenging!
> commit to understanding ... how a failure in your duty as an engineer can actually kill people
I remember sitting in computational methods in uni while our professor was motivating the lesson on condition numbers, mentioning this is the kind of thing that can kill people, and students laughing at him.
Wish I could say that now that I've been in industry around a decade that the people around me have matured, but just as many still don't seem to care about quality.
Way too many people just chasing dollars and prestige with no appreciation for the power they wield.
In the mid 2000's community colleges in Ontario ran programs with diplomas in software engineering. By 2010 they had to change it to software development.
I've always thought it was a bit strange that in the US, the engineer who designs the mechanical parts of your car's brakes needs a professional license, but the engineer who writes the software doesn't.
Not mechanic as in the person that services brakes, but Mechanical Engineer as in the person engineering them.
Mechanical Engineers in the US are usually expected to be Professional Engineers (professional license) and in good standing with ASME, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (professional society).
The people who need the P.Eng. qualification get it and the ones who don't need it tend not (why do all that extra effort if its not required). So that just means more civil engineering positions require it than mech eng positions.
Before you can license a group you need objective standards. Physical parts are easily translatable into standards with science and testable experiences. Software can fall into this category or they could be black boxes like AIs
For some types of software its the code development and testing process is highly regulated, for example aircraft avionics. In this case it doesn't really matter the qualifications of the person who wrote it provided the resulting code met all the process and testing requirements.
Seems like someone has actually managed to get sued for using "Software Engineer" on social media according to the page. IMO that is a little bit concerning isn't it?
Amazon calls the role "Software Development Engineer" here.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 31.3 ms ] threadhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlonY2l3V9c
I've never been able to use the phrase "software engineer", despite having 20+ years of software experience because I was raised to believe that Engineers have silver rings, engineering degrees and professional standing.
Here in Texas, we had a licensure board for Software Engineering for a minute, though it was eventually killed by our Sunset Commission, because almost no one was interested in it (sadly).
The article is an expression of concern. It also cites three court cases to show that it matters.
> Unless someone is licensed with a provincial or territorial engineering regulator, they cannot use the title engineer, or any variation.
So, you can legally call yourself a software engineer if you have your title. There are laws like this in most countries regarding medical doctors. This prevents Doctor of Acupuncture from appearing.
Nor do you need to be an engineer to do a lot of things, but for whatever reason that's considered fair game.
Technically, it is not illegal.
> There are several places where the use of engineer is often used improperly. They include:
Software or data engineer: Unless someone is licensed with a provincial or territorial engineering regulator, they cannot use the title engineer, or any variation. This applies even if the title is assigned by the employer. Alternative titles can include:
- Data analyst
- Data scientist
- Software specialist
- Software technician
- Data technologist
- Data manager
- Data technical expert
> Every person who is not a holder of a licence or a temporary licence and who,
> (a) uses the title “professional engineer” or “ingénieur” or an abbreviation or variation thereof as an occupational or business designation;
> (a.1) uses the title “engineer” or an abbreviation of that title in a manner that will lead to the belief that the person may engage in the practice of professional engineering;
> (b) uses a term, title or description that will lead to the belief that the person may engage in the practice of professional engineering; or
> (c) uses a seal that will lead to the belief that the person is a professional engineer,
> is guilty of an offence and on conviction is liable for the first offence to a fine of not more than $10,000 and for each subsequent offence to a fine of not more than $25,000.
https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90p28#BK43
> Technically, it is not illegal.
Uhh, as far as I can tell, something being against the law == something being illegal
If I need an engineer, I should have at least some assurance that they know what they are doing, and that they aren't going to act unethically or against my best interest. I should also have some assurance that the fact they hold a license, means that they (probably) haven't been negligent, or harmful with their practice.
This is what Texas used for its software licensure examination: https://nceesorg.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2015...
All of that seems like, the barest minimum that I don't think anyone would disagree with to call someone a software engineer.
In BC, I have worked as a "Software Engineer" for 15 years with just a Bachelors and no engineering license, including for large tech companies. It's on my CV/LinkedIn. SE is the standard title internally and externally, it's on job postings, it's used everywhere.
Court case: On 10 March 2020, the Quebec Superior Court (2020 QCCS 1465) upheld a lower court ruling, finding an individual guilty of improperly using the French abbreviation “ing.” In e-mails sent to clients and colleagues, and on a résumé sent to a prospective employer. The Court found that the use of “ing.” by an individual not registered with Quebec’s governing body would induce a reasonable person to conclude that the individual is indeed an engineer. As a result, the individual was found guilty of 4 counts of improper use of title. Leave to appeal was denied by the Quebec Court of Appeal on 5 June 2020 (2020 QCCA 730).
Well no shit.
And one of the main examples in the article is an injunction against an individual for using that title online?
My previous company (one of the GAFAM) had to change the title of everyone to Software Developer after years of arguing with the local engineering body.
And if you happened to leave "engineer" on your Linkedin profile, people from said body were actually regularly checking profiles and directly messaging us with threat of legal actions against us personally.
I have a MSc in CS, just not from Canada. The only way to be able to use that title, is to pay a membership fee to the association(? cartel?) of engineering.
I didn't realize this was the new F(A)*NG, but apparently it's changed again and is "GAMAM" now (TIL).
I'm sure these bodies can provide evidence that people who have paid their membership dues and been bestowed the title of "engineer" write safer and better code, right?
Here's a perfect example of such regulatory corruption – https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-wins-traffic-li.... Someone ran tests and showed that Oregon's red light cameras were flawed. The state in turn fined him for calling himself an "engineer" without a license and barred him from speaking about the problem. Thankfully the supreme court put an end to it pretty quick.
You cannot get a P.Eng license just by paying membership fees.
There is also a discipline process for engineering misconduct.
Modern engineering is all about standards and process.
Reminds me. One of the reasons California has high building costs and lack of construction workers is they went way overboard on contractors licensing.
Having an engineering license means that you know the person when through a full college degree and/or could prove they have enough experience to compensate for it (not that easy btw). In Canada, it's not enough to just get a "major" in something related to engineering, they are a completely separate category of programs that have 1.5x the number of credits (>120 instead of 90) and are roughly equivalent to getting a Bachelor + master in other disciplines (it's 4 years, full-time, with full-time internships and/or classes during summers. 5 years if you want your summer off)
It also means that they can lose that title if they fuck up badly and get reported. You can't change the name of the company or create a new online account to escape that bad rep. The tone of the discussion is completely different when the person being pressured to sign something they shouldn't by a manager is risking their entire career over it.
Asking for an engineering stamp on something means that you know a specific person will be personally responsible for it. They can't get out of it with a cute letter about how they will investigate and take proper actions for the future.
To become an engineer in Canada, you need to learn and commit to understanding in full every major engineering disaster in the country in the last 100 years, and how a failure in your duty as an engineer can actually kill people.
I feel like we could split software engineering from software development and gain a lot in our industry. Not all development needs to be engineering, but some absolutely does.
It is not just glueing things together and modify randomly until everything somewhat works under ideal conditions?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
We still treat documentation as a third class citizen.
We still allow stakeholders to pressure at the cost of long term security and sanity.
Important and rigid business rules, the most obvious candidates for automated tests, still go untested.
Access to critical parts is still open and backups are lacking. You can probably do a lot of damage without any malicious intent in many places if you're not careful.
I can go on. Funny thing is, these things still happen in companies which try to adhere to some kind of outside standard. Most CS classes talk about security vulnerabilities and cancelled software projects costing millions, but never go in depth. Even our research is lacking.
What we learned is no one cares until the costs are higher than the gains, excepting a few critical fields I'd wager 99% of software "engineers" will never step foot in.
It was an integer overflow. Those still happen all the time.
In the early part of my career, I (and many of my friends) invested significant amounts of our time learning and pushing PL/T because the way things were going:
- Things are toys before they become tools. Early word processors were toys util they replaced typewriters.
- As the tools become more important, they will become more mainstream. Requirements will increase, e.g. that they be more reliable, that they become more usable.
- We now have designers in tech, indicating that the market cares about usability.
- There is still no formal verification of software, just "tests" which are applied in varying degrees of completeness.
To rely on "testing" is fine for a lot of consumer applications, but when I briefly worked in medical devices, we used C++. We did not hire a specialist with experience in Coq. Similarly when I worked with medical data.
I'll be quite blunt and cynical about it. Don't blame the software "engineers" / developers / whatever you want to call us. One of my friends actually went back to school to do research on this stuff, but I'm pretty sure he made a pittance compared to the friends who worked on the like button at Facebook. The market doesn't care. Call me a software designer if you like, I'll take the fat paycheck after spending the entire early part of my career trying to make things reliable, only to be slotted into the same "tech bro" category by a society that doesn't care.
At university, we were required to take a computer scientists & the society course, which software development disasters and ethics were the main part of the course. The Therac-25 case is a timeless classic, but there's others too. All software engineers should learn about past failures.
1) You would have to pay these real engineers with licenses more for this to make sense. Currently most jobs that even make mention of this requirement pay well under what the software development equivalent would make
2) Companies don't like to hire "Real" engineers wherever possible because like all bureaucracy, sometimes they prevent projects moving forward. Companies are incentivized to employ the bare minimum of licensed individuals to sign off on the cheaper and faster work of the unlicensed proletariat. and pressure is put on the licensed to rubber stamp things.
3) I have found a lot of the courses in engineering school about ethics etc to be extremely rubber stamp/"mandatory safety training" ish, just like the dumb what's a stop sign test at the DMV. I doubt people en masse remember what they learn. I see it as a complex ruse to make people do the equivalent of sign a legal document saying "I accept the terms of this agreement and have the capacity to do so", more of "something that can be taken away if bad things happen" than "something to prevent bad things from happening"
> 2) Companies don't like to hire "Real" engineers wherever possible because like all bureaucracy, sometimes they prevent projects moving forward. Companies are incentivized to employ the bare minimum of licensed individuals to sign off on the cheaper and faster work of the unlicensed proletariat. and pressure is put on the licensed to rubber stamp things.
These are reasons why companies might not want to hire engineers, but also reason why we might not want to do business with those sorts of companies. The fact that lots of companies seem to have gotten away with this stance seems to indicate a failure somewhere.
> 3) I have found a lot of the courses in engineering school about ethics etc to be extremely rubber stamp/"mandatory safety training" ish, just like the dumb what's a stop sign test at the DMV. I doubt people en masse remember what they learn. I see it as a complex ruse to make people do the equivalent of sign a legal document saying "I accept the terms of this agreement and have the capacity to do so", more of "something that can be taken away if bad things happen" than "something to prevent bad things from happening"
Yeah kinda. In defense of this sort of thing, going on to get a professional engineering license is definitely not something that all engineering students do. Many go on to do jobs that are more like programmers or technicians, right? Maybe the typical engineering degree should be renamed to pre-enginnering or something, but something tells me getting universities on board with that will be... challenging!
I remember sitting in computational methods in uni while our professor was motivating the lesson on condition numbers, mentioning this is the kind of thing that can kill people, and students laughing at him.
Wish I could say that now that I've been in industry around a decade that the people around me have matured, but just as many still don't seem to care about quality.
Way too many people just chasing dollars and prestige with no appreciation for the power they wield.
(Not Canadian, though).
I don't think that's true.
Mechanical Engineers in the US are usually expected to be Professional Engineers (professional license) and in good standing with ASME, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (professional society).
It's mostly Civil Engineers who bother to get PEs.
Amazon calls the role "Software Development Engineer" here.
Very few Germans know about that, though.