https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/at-work/tech-careers/arizona-engineer-licensing-lawsuit

It's certainly all beyond my expertise, but my impression on these overzealous licensing boards is that the titles need to get more specific. If there's no licensing for certain types of engineering, then people doing those jobs should be able to use the title freely. For jobs that do have accreditation standards, the licensed title should be more specific, like structural engineer, or bridge engineer, or whatever makes sense for the jobs involved. Thus, the title engineer alone would still have some flexibility, but the specific engineering fields that need to be protected could be protected. Just my opinion.

 

Life is whatever you can get away with, don't cut yourself short with a pathetic title.
Call yourself whatever you want, it's easier to apologize than ask for permission.

In my past life, I owned a product development company, I interviewed many engineering candidates.
After a while I gave up caring about degrees and titles, they tend to have very little correlation to actual ability.

 

What counts are the number of acronyms after your name. Degreed, conveyed by passing a state exam, recognized exam-based certifications, a board of governors approved specialization, possession of a state-licensed stamp, professional organization certifications, etc. The more certifications the higher the pay. What you put in front of your name not so much.

 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/at-work/tech-careers/arizona-engineer-licensing-lawsuit

These issues go back many decades and the solution is so simple and obvious it requires a government bureaucracy not to see it: Stop trying to keep people that have earned engineering degrees from calling themselves engineers. That's just pissing in the wind -- you might as well just ordain that 1024 bytes is a "kibibyte" with the unit "KiB" and expect people to actually use it.

They are trying to regulate people that do certain types of work and reserve a title for their use. Fine. So create a title for that purpose -- and they already have a couple of prime candidates that everyone already recognizes as being of special significance: "professional engineer" or "licensed engineer" or even "licensed professional engineer".

 

A simple PE after your name and the stamp embossed over your signature says it all and differentiates all that is necessary.

 

Of the engineers that worked for me and with me:
Carrel: had 40 patents, and his degree was in chemistry not EE.
Stole Bill from Motorola; Many patents, no college, very creative.
JW: Degree in math not EE, very very creative
Many of the best EE had two year of college not 4 to 6.
Let go several Dr. of EE because they just did not know what they were doing.
I am certain that most of the software engineers had no degree.

I have been in a company where a "Dr" was minimal. Most of the companies cared more about getting it done, and degrees were not important. (depends on size of the company and what country)

A interview is hard when you only have 3 years of experience and little college. But at some point after your pay check said "senior engineer" or "R&D Manager" or owner they stop asking about your school and grades.

 

Of the engineers that worked for me and with me:
Carrel: had 40 patents, and his degree was in chemistry not EE.
Stole Bill from Motorola; Many patents, no college, very creative.
JW: Degree in math not EE, very very creative
Many of the best EE had two year of college not 4 to 6.
Let go several Dr. of EE because they just did not know what they were doing.
I am certain that most of the software engineers had no degree.

I have been in a company where a "Dr" was minimal. Most of the companies cared more about getting it done, and degrees were not important. (depends on size of the company and what country)

A interview is hard when you only have 3 years of experience and little college. But at some point after your pay check said "senior engineer" or "R&D Manager" or owner they stop asking about your school and grades.

Many companies, particularly larger companies, use degrees, transcripts, GPAs, and such as proxies for actual qualification in situations in which the applicant doesn't have the track record to establish their qualifications based on demonstrated performance. Often times these companies are in a position to hire entry-level engineers by the lot and can tolerate the overhead of weeding out the chaff and looking for the pearls that more often than not are in that group as well and that they want to get their hands on first. They are also fully aware that they are losing out on some diamonds in the ruff, but they will pick some of them up later after they have an established work history to base their hiring decision on.

The company I worked for was at the opposite extreme -- while they only actively recruited at engineering schools, they would consider any applicant regardless of education provided they could convince us that they had a high potential to do the work we did. At the same time, we also had a disproportionate number of Ph.D.s because of the nature of some of the work we did. Yet everyone was basically on an equal footing, with the president of the company really only being first among equals. It made for a very pleasant and rewarding work environment most of the time.

 

I agree with Ron, the degree right out of college helps to get you hired. But after a couple decades of experience no one cares about anything other than performance. If you're doing engineering work you are an engineer.

 

I agree with Ron, the degree right out of college helps to get you hired. But after a couple decades of experience no one cares about anything other than performance. If you're doing engineering work you are an engineer.

I think in most industries it doesn't take nearly that long. Three to five years is usually enough for a company to be able to get a good feel for your ability to perform as an engineer during a decent technical interview. I'm sure there are fields where that's not the case, though.