blog: Overlooked Essentials for Optimizing Code (Software Engineering degrees)

[Diego Cano Lagneaux]

>>> [ ... ]
>>
>> Well, I am not sure you got what I meant. What I said is not that
>> engineers will never code or won't have to after a couple years. The
>> idea is more that engineers will be able to have people with different
>> skills to manage, or to work closely with, so they'll have to know many
>> fields to understand the whole thing. And I was not talking specifically
>> about computers, but about all kinds of engineering. Engineering is
>> about understanding and developping projects as a whole, which doesn't
>> exclude working also on the details.
>> Of course, many engineers may end doing different things, which is
>> another advantage of the generalist approach. I'm actually doing
>> websites now!
>
> Yeah, I wasn't accusing you of sharing that viewpoint, at least not in  
> the same way that those students I mentioned in my post.
>
> But you do agree that in the case of Software Engineers at least, you  
> will lead a big project only after you have several years of experience  
> (more or less depending on how big the project is), and even so, only if  
> you are skilled enough? But more importantly, you don't need to lead  
> over anyone to be a Software Engineer, even a good one.
> In other words, it's not very analogous to say, civil engineering.
>
>

Well, I think a simple look at the real world is enough to agree that you  
need several years of experience and good skills. Moreover, my personal  
experience is that it's easier to get a job (and therefore the much needed  
working experience) when you have a 3-year degree than a 5-year one, at  
least in Spain: I've been told at many job interviews that I was  
'overqualified' (I didn't care about that, just wanted to work, but they  
did)
However, I still think all engineerings* are conceptually the same: you  
need all qualifications for large projects (which doesn't exclude smaller  
ones) in your field; given enough time, you have to be able to do  
everything. Of course, for anything larger than quite small, you'll need a  
team. It's just that Civil Engineering usually deals with large projects,  
and most Software projects are smaller.
I insist: this is conceptually. Real world is most Computer Engineers  
never get to do engineering work, and almost all spend their first years  
not being engineers.

*To me, engineering is the process of creating mechanisms, from  
planification to physical result.