I’m an engineer. I’m on my phone looking at memes until someone asks me a question, then I do a thing in 5 minutes that they expected to take 5 days because people don’t understand computers, then I go back to the memes.
I have been downvoted to hell for what I’m about to say, but I’m going to say it again anyway.
IT support people are now called engineers. No, I don’t like it. No it’s not proper “engineering”. Yes, language evolves and there’s nothing we can do about it. If that’s a problem for people, I recommend screaming into the void. It doesn’t help, but you feel better after a while.
IMO no engineering degree, no engineer. There’s some exceptions for incredible self taught folks but they’re drowned out by so many others that just use the title without the skill
It’s corporate self aggrandizing wank. On par with calling subway workers “sandwich artists”. It’s as insulting to the workers as it is ridiculous
I know plently of helpdesk guys that do engineering, if engineering is “identify an issue, find and implement a fix.” Its varying degrees of rudimentary, but the same could be said about anyone in conputer science.
The truth is no one in computer science, programmers, SREs or otherwise, are licensed engineers. Why does a programmer have more of a claim to an unearned title than anyone else in the field?
As an engineer:
- Receive or identify a problem.
- Design a solution that solves or mitigated the problem.
- Usually pay someone to make a prototype or do it ourselves
- Test the prototype and see if it solves the problem. If no, go back to #2 until a workable solution is found
- Get someone else to build the final thing.
- Make sure thing works. Ship it.
This is a recursive and iterative process. Meaning you will find problems inside your solutions and need to fix them.
Eventually you finish the thing and get a new problem and do the whole game over again. It’s like a puzzle that requires absurd amounts of knowledge to play well, but anyone could try to solve the problem. That’s why good engineers are paid pretty well.
That’s a pretty good run down. There’s all sorts of soft skills required for that as well, and hard skills specific to the industry they’re in, but I think you’ve got the essence of it. Also in step 6, add: “take responsibility for everything that will go wrong with thing in the future” aka “sign off”.
Pretty sure they drive trains
No joke, my wife’s grandpa was a mechanical engineer with a degree from Notre Dame, and he chose engineering apparently because as a 17yo, he thought he was going to learn to drive trains.
I put the data in excel and make colorful charts to show management that their ideas are possible but expensive. Then do the same to show the cost of not purchasing maintenance equipment is in fact more costly than the necessary equipment.
Then they dont purchase the equipment anyway, right? That’s what tends to happen in my case.
“The Engineering Method” by Mark Hammond aka the engineer guy is a great read…
…is what I would say if I actually purchased books from my wishlist.
