this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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The answer to your question is because you’re confusing very specific job titles that refer to specific industries and jobs, with a single word with centuries of history and has a far more broad meaning that predates the usage that you prefer which only dates back to evidently 1907 America.
“Chief of software surgery” would be a play on a specific job, which is a “surgeon” a word which here means “a medical specialist who practices surgery” so it refers to one particular thing in one particular field of work.
“Engineer” on the other hand, refers to someone who “devises or contrives” something, and more broadly if you look at its Latin origins, “Cleverness”. So the term “Engineer” is linguistically appropriate for all kinds of jobs that fit into its fairly broad definition, unlike Surgeon, which has a more specific meaning. The “Engineering standards of care and professional liability” you’re referring to is no less made-up than the word Engineer itself.
I get your point that people with “Engineering” degrees who work in the fields of like mechanical or electrical engineering want to hold onto that word as some kind of earned title, but if we’re being honest, if they wanted that they should have picked a more distinct word.
I think engineers have been held liable for the soundness and fitness-for-purpose of what they "engineered" since ancient Rome - though they have certainly been called upon to engineer a greater variety of things in the past couple of centuries. And I think if someone proposes to engineer software, I am all for that! We could do with a great deal more of it in fact. And let's dispense with this perpetual disclaimer of warranty for merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and such terms. If an engineer designs it and it does not work, the engineer is generally held to be negligent and liable . . . except if they are a software engineer, of course.
All software in existence is engineered. To write software is by definition engineering. It is something that is devised by someone. Liability has nothing to do with the term engineer or the act of engineering, it’s not a part of the definition or history of the word.
What I feel like you’re referring to is a “Professional engineering license” as it’s known in the states, which is something entirely unrelated to the act of engineering as a whole. That’s a licensure invented long after the fall of the Roman Empire and it’s that licensure, not the word “engineer” which incurs the liability you’re talking about.
You’re confused because like I said, the organization(s) that are responsible for that licensure picked a bad term for it, because it’s too similar to the word “Engineer” which doesn’t inherently have anything to do with it. If they had coined a more concise, specific term related to what they do, like Surgeon, they wouldn’t have this problem.
Thank you for this correction. I will make a note that professional engineering has nothing to do with engineering - I don't know how I have been so confused for so long!
Unrelated in that professional engineering licensure is not something that just inherently applies to the entire concept of engineering, or would apply to anyone with an engineering title, that isn’t specifically claiming they are PE accredited. All PEs are engineers but not all engineers are PEs. Thats why I’m saying they would have done well with a separate term, rather than stick another word on the front. A medical analogy would be surgeons changing their title to “Surgeon medical professionals” and then getting upset that any non-surgeons are calling themselves “medical professionals”. Like you do have this special thing you had to go through all this extra work to achieve and you deserve your special title for that, but you can’t just co-opt a single word that is basically just a verb that accurate applies to multiple jobs across many industries, when that word has been in regular use, unassociated with your organization, for centuries. At least, you can’t do that and be upset that nobody gives a shit.