Not An Engineer

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Ravi Mohan makes the provocative, if not new claim (with follow up) that programmers are not engineers. I take the majority of his quibble to be the title some flaunt: "software engineer."

I've never felt able to use "engineer" for myself, but I don't perceive this badly. My official title is "software architect" though most of my day is not spent on architecture.

It's a bit postmodern of me but does anyone's title mean much?  Short of very specialized work, one must have multiple skillsets for the different roles they are cast in on a daily basis.

I have to do the following, fairly regularly:
1. Write Code
2. Write Specs
3. Customer Service
4. Testing
5. Write Proposals
6. Mentor
7. Marketing

I'm owning up to a lot of stuff, particulary #7, that I would never admit to for the sake of saying that most jobs these days require multiple intelligences.

Think Santiago Calatrava: engineer, architect, artist. And he deals with clients, too.

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