I know a guy who just says he stacks shelves at Tesco as he cannot be bothred to explain 😂
I used to work for Cisco (the huge router etc. company) but my mom thought I was working for Sysco (the food services supply company). She was very surprised to learn that I had anything at all to do with computers.
Oh wow I just now realized they were two different companies. I thought it was just one really really diversified company 🤣
Code whispers
I am partial to “code monkey”
On a serious note, I usually refer to myself as a developer or a software engineer when I wanna sound a bit more important.
Digital archæologist. Bitshifter.
Remember when they tried to make ninja, Rockstar, and guru a thing?
Ow God I just cringed so hard I partly digested my skin. All those wacky Microsoft conferences. I’ve never felt so infantalised.
Microsoft still uses those phrases un-ironically all the time.
I’m a Senior Software Engineer, outside of countries where engineer is a protected title. I’m also a Beep-Boop Technician, Specialized Generalist (not Full-Stack since I have mostly succeeded in avoiding JS, until this afternoon), Problem Fixer, Technical Diplomat, Cat Herder (sometimes a tech lead), and The-Mean-Guy-That-Rejects-Commits-When-There-Are-API-Calls-Made-Without-TLS-Encryption-And-Hardcoded-Secrets (infosec likes me but always seems genuinely confused at a dev not fighting them).
I’m sorry, come again?
sounds like a cool job y’all hiring haha jk unless
Not on my team, unfortunately but, I’ll check. What languages/experience have you got?
Oh man, I didn’t think that’d work haha… Kind of you to offer but I was recently promoted and wouldn’t feel right leaving now. Partially out of respect for my boss and partially because we are severely understaffed. But seriously, thanks for offering to ask around. Very generous of you to offer your help to a stranger ❤️
since I have mostly succeeded in avoiding JS, until this afternoon
Sorry to hear that. I hit the same pothole about 6 months ago. I had been so fine with avoiding JS, but the guys building our admin console broke their build and couldn’t figure out how to fix it. Even worse, then I had to write up best practices for JS
Yeah. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do the programming. Unfortunately, I had to guide the debug. Happy to help people learn but the language, especially in its typing, is just awful.
I’m learning that I’m just enough of a front end dev to make a very ugly site. Navigating all the various CSS and JS frameworks feels like pulling teeth.
Having a familiarity is absolutely a great thing. The syntax isn’t alien, so, debug and guiding juniors through figuring out why their project isn’t working isn’t too terrible. The typing is probably what drives me crazy the most. It’s just bad and the standard library doesn’t seem to be equipped to handle every type that it can “support” cleanly.
Tech Priest Litanizer
Software Author/ Author
“coder-codewriter”
Feces Fling Server Monkey, 2nd class.
I think “prompt engineer” is the best job title on multiple levels
Chief bit twiddler
“engineer” is different to “programmer”. A programmer writes code, while an engineer does more than that, including system design and architecture.
A programmer can call themselves an engineer if they want. There’s no laws against it.
Therefore it doesn’t matter what you call yourself.
They can, but it doesn’t make them an engineer. I can’t call myself an electrician just because I swapped some light switches.
There are many countries where there is a law against it. Maybe the USA isn’t one of them.
In Canada the term “Engineer” is a protected title that only registered professional engineers may use. Claiming to be an engineer without such credentials is considered equivalent to claiming to be a doctor of medicine; It constitutes fraud.
That being said, I see all the time employers and employees, seemingly ignorant to this law, post “Software Engineer” in job titles.
Registered professional engineers in the software development space is a rare occurrence.
It depends who I’m talking to and where I live. Where I live, engineer is a protected title and requires certification/etc so that takes it out of the race. That leaves the other options. Generally I am a Web Developer to people my age or younger, to people older than me I am usually a Computer Programmer but also sometimes a Developer or Software Developer instead. Realistically, I am a Full Stack Website Developer.
Referring to my job doesn’t get any easier even as someone in tech.
Lives ARE on the line. It was faulty software that caused the Boeing 737 Max to crash twice, killing 346 people. Software runs your car, the trains, rockets, literally everything.
Do you know what the reasoning is behind protecting a title like that with a certification requirement?
It’s not like a medical doctor or a structural engineer, where lives are on the line. Even with that, we end up with some official doctors of medicine who are misinformation vendors. I can’t keep track of the number of times Dr. Drew has spouted anti-science nonsense about topics outside of his addiction specialty and not taken accountability for it, for instance.
Not only a certification, but in Italy you need to be registered to a register/bar and pay a yearly fee in order to be an engineer.
It’s like being a lawyer in some ways.
At least in civil, the reason is because the professional engineer (PE) stamps all plans and assumes responsibility for said plans by doing so. Plans cannot be built without a stamp. This is the case because someone has to be found liable if a bridge should kill people, and it shouldn’t be the technicians, designers or EITs under the PE, because they don’t make nearly as much. With great pay comes great liability.
This makes sense for civil, structural, electrical engineering, and similar. For software engineering though, it doesn’t make sense to me unless it’s for software specifically meant for something critically important for life or safety, like embedded software for industrial safety sensors and shutoff relays, medical monitoring, etc. And that kind of equipment I would expect to have the responsibility for signing off as safe by software-adjacent people like QA testers and non-software people like environmental health and safety officers, lawyers, and so forth.
I think typically A, B, C, and F are acceptable to most people. I certainly wouldn’t mind any of those descriptions. D feels antiquated. E is too broad. G just sounds like a hobbyist.
About D, you could also be programming robots, PLC’s or thermostats 🤷♂️
Yeah but the programming is done on a computer and then uploaded to that device. It’s not specific enough of a term anymore. That’s why it feels antiquated. Back in the 80s, most people didn’t know with about computers to know there were differences in different types of programming, and there were fewer types then too. These days you still don’t need to be too specific unless you’re discussing your role with someone else in the industry but still, if you just say you’re a programmer now, pretty much everyone will know you mean it’s computer programming.
