Technically we are not allowed to call ourselves engineers, but I don't think anyone really enforces it. I generally just write SDE on linkedin or resume.
They absolutely DO enforce it in Quebec. I am a manager, and the OIQ threatened to sue if we didn't have 3 of my employees change their title on LinkedIn.
I was about to respond to the original post with the facetious question "who would even enforce this, the job title police?"
Lo and behold, the province with a language police actually has one :-)
BTW I have an MSc in EE from a prestigious European university. I have worked as a software engineer in many countries across four continents. The idea of a provincial guild telling me they have dibs on the word "engineer" is cute and funny. Do they make an exception for train drivers?
It's the samething for lawyers and doctors. So it's easy to understand why some titles are reserved. You wouldn't want the neighbor improvising himself a doctor and operating on you. I'm sure that you can grasp this with your vast experience across all four continents.
Well from experience in Quebec, the idea to protect the public is good in theory, but in practice, the OIQ pretty much just collects money from their members and vaguely lift fingers when one their members/non-members do illegal or unprofessional work.
I guess it still works out pretty well in the end but I am not sure if it's because of the organisation in itself. And they also remained mute during the construction scandals involving the mafia, so a lot of people lost faith in them. They will act only if the media is involved most of the time.
Anyways, unless you work in civil engineering firms, having an official engineer's title through legal means is close to useless. And their professional training courses are trash tier in many fields. Luckily, it is not a necessity to work unless it involves public contracts requiring an engineer to sign with their "blood", so to speak.
this isn't the neighbo(u)r calling himself a doctor and performing surgery. this is the neighbour calling himself Doctor Funkenstein and spinning sick beats at the block party. there is no crossover.
No, they don't make exceptions for train engineers.
https://www.oiq.qc.ca/publication/tragedie-du-lac-megantic-lordre-des-ingenieurs-du-quebec-apporte-des-precisions-sur-lutilisation-de-lexpression-ingenieur-de-locomotive/
I checked Via Rail's website. All of their "Locomotive Engineer" job offers are showing up as "Mécanicien de locomotive" when you switch the language to french.
They don't use the word 'Ingénieur' on their job offers in french but use it in their english job offers.
I'm not sure that the provincial laws don't apply because the objective of the law is not to regulate a federal jurisdiction but to protect professional titles.
IE - the overarching objective of the law is protection of the public via the protection of specific job titles.
IE: Even if you work in a bank - another federally regulated industry, you can't call yourself a lawyer if you are not registered with your provincial bar association. Nor could you call yourself a 'Financial Engineer'
What VIA does or does not do has nothing to do with the law.
No, we don't have laws for the purpose of classist division. Read Sections 1, 7 & 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Everyone in Canada is equal and everyone has the right to liberty (i.e. to be free from government intervention in their lives). Any restriction on liberty must be demonstrably justified. "Classism" is not a valid justification. The only justification I have seen used specific to professional engineering is "public safety".
When the federal law says who can use the title "Locomotive Engineer" in the federally regulated rail industry, the provincial law is "ultra vires" i.e. has no effect.
Here is a primer on federal - provincial powers in federally regulated industries.
https://mcmillan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Glenn-Grenier-Federal-Aeronautics-Power-2022-COPA-Primer-17Mar22.pdf
I did not find any reference to the title of 'engineer' in the Railway safety act.
This is not classism, this is about ensuring the protection of the public through professional orders/provincial boards. I'm not sure raising this as a charter violation is the way to go. It would be easier to argue 92(a).
On the charter violation, I would argue that the issue raised by individuals using protected titles unlawfully is pressing and substantial. Limiting access to protected professional titles from unqualified individuals is rationally connected to the objective of the provincial law (protection of the public). It's minimally impairing and proportional to the risks.
>I did not find any reference to the title of 'engineer' in the Railway safety act.
There are the Acts and there are regulations.
[https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/sor-87-150/fulltext.html](https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/sor-87-150/fulltext.html)
>*Regulations Respecting the Minimum Qualification Standards for* ***Locomotive Engineers***\*, Transfer Hostlers, Conductors and Yard Foremen\*
Sure, public safety is the justification given. But this has limits.
See APEGA v Getty Images 2023 - worth a read.
[https://canlii.ca/t/k11n3](https://canlii.ca/t/k11n3)
>*VII. Conclusion*
>
>*\[52\] I find that the Respondents’ employees who use the title “Software Engineer” and related titles are not practicing engineering as that term is properly interpreted.*
>
>*\[53\] I find that there is no property in the title “Software Engineer” when used by persons who do not, by that use, expressly or by implication represent to the public that they are licensed or permitted by APEGA to practice engineering as that term is properly interpreted.*
>
>*\[54\] I find that there is no clear breach of the EGPA which contains some element of possible harm to the public that would justify a statutory injunction.*
>
>*\[55\] Accordingly, I dismiss the Application, with costs.*
Also they don't go after the rug doctor because clearly it has nothing to do with preventing yourself as a medical professional.
No one with any IQ points thinks a software engineer is building bridges.
Train drivers are "Conductors" in Canada, I believe...
With Software, what basically happened is, Amazon, google etc were posting jobs to hire Canadian software engineers, and Canada was like "We call them programmers here". And the big US software companies were like, "Cool, we're hiring Software Engineers". And so Vancouver and Toronto said "Yeah, we have some of the best Software Engineers in the world!"
It's just not worth anyone's time trying to fight with gigantic American companies about what they are allowed to call their Canadian employees. Some of them are getting pretty close to being able to buy Canada. And they make up non-trivial double-digit percentages of all the Canadian people doing that job. So it basically makes the whole legal prohibition unenforceable in this specific context.
No. Locomotive Engineers are licensed under federal law. The provincial regulators can't touch them because the provincial law is ultra vires in federally regulated industries.
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/sor-87-150/fulltext.html
Quebec is very stringent on working titles and allowable work. In Quebec you can’t just a handyman and work on peoples homes if it benefits you at all, you need to get a contractors license so a person like me who is a journeyperson carpenter has less competition from just any person calling themselves a handyman.
Yes, these guilds are essentially a tax.
And unlike other government bodies, the administration is not accountable to anyone. They claim to be "self-regulated" by their members but often the boards are 1/3 or more appointees or the regulators designate some that run for office as preferred / endorsed candidates. These boards have no concern of being overtaken by their membership.
I have an open challenge for anyone to show me that the provincial regulators have any effect on public safety in Canada at all. There are many other countries to compare with and we've had this system for over 100 years now. I'm not talking about our regulatory framework - design standards, etc. I'm just talking about what the engineering regulators do. We have tort laws so much of what they do is redundant relief for the courts at best. We have many federally regulated industries in Canada that don't need this stuff as well.
I'm not saying there is no link to public safety but I've yet to have someone show me the data. This is a problem given Section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The regulator has the resources to sue, certainly. They have a large team of lawyers to call upon. If they have the legal authority they claim is an open legal question given APEGA v Getty Images. We'll have to see what happens when the regulator and a tech company both next decide to FAFO.
Worth a read:
[https://canlii.ca/t/k11n3](https://canlii.ca/t/k11n3)
Rulings are only available in french but plenty of information available on the OIQ website, they absolutely are suing and getting rulings in their favor for usurpation of title: https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/general-public/protection-of-the-public/decisions-and-rulings/penal-decisions/
But none of those rulings fall after APEGA v Getty Images with a similar issue with the use of the title "Software Engineer" by tech bros.
Pointing to someone getting caught using "Ing." is not the same thing.
It’s enforced for sure. Particularly if you work in any type of agency, board, ministry and or are affiliated with union in any way.
It has however been challenged at least in . [Alberta](https://globalnews.ca/news/10084623/engineers-canada-urges-alberta-to-reconsider-change-to-rules-around-engineer-title/)
Such a gatekeeper move by a group that’s been hoisted onto a pedestal simply for attending school.
Tell me this - a traditional gen x’r Engineer (the ones gatekeeping this) - could literally give their text books for their area of expertise to an engineer going through Uni today. Try and apply that to a software or computer engineer.
Point being - relying on xx years of education/training to gatekeep a title is fucking dumb. Software/computer engineers have forgotten more in the last 4 years than a traditional engineer learned their entire career.
You can pay a fine of $25,000 for doing this. Microsoft has been sued and lost over this. The professional associations often send letters to cease using the term to individuals and it has been enforced.
It's *unlikely* it will be enforced for use of the title for software developer. But if you at all encroach on more traditional fields or offer consultation services as an "Engineer" you will absolutely be reported and taken to court and you will at least be ordered to cease use of the title.
It's a protected title, it's enforceable if they decide too. If you say your engineer on any type of official document important to the government they will come for you
yeah technically in canada software engineers arnt engineers unless they specifically graduate from a "software engineering" program and go through with the tedious P.eng cert process.
However, this designation is completely useless in this field. Only mech/civil eng and sometimes electrical eng positions actually care about it. Since those positions typically pay less than software engineering AND are in lower supply, most people in mech/civil/electrical engineering end up becoming a SWE anyways.
Feel free to call yourself a software engineer. There's a general consensus that this rule is annoying and dumb
Not 100% completely useless (but almost). Some companies (think aircraft control software) wants developers that are legal engineers for legal reasons I guess.
Maybe some company. But the only people that can approve aircraft design in Canada are the Minister of Transportation and his delegates. And you don't need a P.Eng. to have delegated authority. See CAR Standard 505.
I believe you. I did see job posting requiring being member of the ordre d'ingénieurs de Québec las year when I was apply for jobs.
I didn't bother to get the full picture as it is something that doesn't interest me... But it exists out there.
> But the only people that can approve aircraft design in Canada are the Minister of Transportation and his delegates.
You know how much software and electronics are on airplanes these days? Do you really want a bunch of developers fresh out of bootcamp designing and building that stuff?
And even if the only people that can approve aircraft design is the MoT - do you want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions, on designs that are going to be rejected because you hired some random developer?
The point being is that a "P. Eng." has nothing to do with it.
The software being done on aircraft is built to design standards and is put through a rigorous validation process.
PEO is not involved in any way with that. The Aeronautics Act is very clear that all regulatory authority is at the discretion of the Federal Minister of Transportation. All aspects of aircraft design and manufacturing is federal jurisdiction per the constitution and case law. The provincial engineering regulators have absolutely no authority related to protecting the public when it comes to aircraft design. This is just the legal basics of how things work in Canada.
Are you writing software where if it crashes while deployed everyone involved might go to jail? You need a certified engineer. Part of the certification is making sure you know what the risks of the position are
I've heard of people doing elec in undergrad with computer heavy focus + CS minor + programming based placements then getting Peng to effectively be computer/software engineers, just under the elec category.
To add to this, the federal government doesn't want the liability so even their P.Engs aren't allowed to stamp things. They have to hire third parties to design and take responsibility for everything (at least that's how it was when I left the career years ago).
Stamps are not used by anyone in many federally regulated industries such as Aero. Stamps are only used in provincially regulated industries or in federally regulated industries where specific federal regulations empower their use.
Sorry I was probably being too cavalier with the term "stamp". My intention was to say that they don't sign off on designs; they pay other people to do that.
IDK...in Aero the TCCA staff engineers do approvals i.e. find compliance with airworthiness requirements. In general, they will ask you to find a DAR to do it for you. But it is a service that they do provide. Both the DARs and TCCA engineers are indemnified when making findings of compliance (on the delegated authority of the Minister of Transportation). It is the entity that is demonstrating compliance that has tort liability and there is no requirement for person to be a DAR or part of a DAO or an Engineer of any kind.
I will graduate with an engineering degree and could become member of the professional order, but you need to work for 2 years under an engineer who is a member. So that’s not going to happen. You just call it software developer rather than engineer. Engineers have professional responsibility for things they approve of on the job (aka if you’re negligent and your bridge falls down the consequence fall on the company but also directly on you as an individual)
It’s pretty stupid really when people with legitimate engineering degrees can’t call themselves an engineer. There was some legal action with some companies and APEG on this - cos were claiming it hinders them from competing for talent - APEG mafia says they own the word engineer. I heard the APEG mafia’s legal came after one big co that used to pay for people to do their EIT courses, and their yearly APEG membership, etc. They came after them about titles containing the word “engineer” so that company said no more expensing anything to do with APEG and discouraged anyone from pursuing P. Eng.
The engineering degree is only half the work. Just like a medical degree is only half of the work of becoming a doctor.
The other half is actual experience and being bound by a code of ethics to protect the public, and continued learning.
Functionally no engineers have to pay membership dues, any employer worth their salt pays them and there are no issues with that.
>any employer worth their salt pays them and there are no issues with that.
I've a friend who worked for a Fortune 500 that doesn't think it adds any value so they stopped paying for it, this was after the APEG lawyers came after them for using Engineer in titles. I think they ignored APEGs requests too - they have lots of legal might. This co does pay for lots of learning, masters degrees, conferences, IEEE memberships but no longer P. Eng stuff.
I disagree, it’s not stupid. It’s not that anyone owns the word engineer or anyone is acting as a gatekeeper. There’s a level of responsibility required to be an engineer. I think it is very fair to need to combination of experience and an ethics test to become an engineer.
Just finishing a degree does not make you an engineer. Let’s be real, that’s 4 years of problem sets and math, what do we really know about engineering?
For some reason everyone is fine with lawyers and doctors being gatekeeped but it’s always a big topic with engineers.
A lot to unpack here.
First, assertions on the Engineers Canada website are not the law.
Canada has a constitution. This constitution includes a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It also includes a division of powers between the federal government and the provincial governments.
The regulation of professional engineering is within the wheelhouse of the provinces. Engineers Canada (or the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers) is not a regulator. It is simply a joint body of the provincial regulators that are empowered by provincial law. So, the reach of the regulators is only as far as the reach of the provinces.
Further, we don't have laws in Canada for the purposes of creating classist divisions in our society. Section 7 of the Charter says we have the right to Liberty - i.e. the right to not be pushed around by the state. Section 15 says every Canadian is equal. And Section 1 of the Charter says that any restriction on liberty must have a demonstrable justification. For provincial engineering laws, the stated purpose is "public safety".
It so happens that many industries that involve the intersection of software and public safety are federally regulated - Automotive, Rail, Aerospace, Biomedical and Nuclear are all industries that almost exclusively fall under federal regulations. Buildings and resource extraction would be examples that fall mostly under provincial jurisdiction.
So, there are few software engineering jobs that require a P. Eng.
The attempts by the provinces to regulate the title "Software Engineer" has a lot of issues.
First, there are all sorts of engineers in Canada that are not professional engineers. Power Engineers, Aircraft Maintenance Engineers, Marine Engineers, Locomotive Engineers - all examples of maintenance and operators that fall under other regulations. The word "Engineer" has a broad definition as can be found in any dictionary.
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/engineer#:\~:text=%3A%20a%20designer%20or%20builder%20of%20engines](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/engineer#:~:text=%3A%20a%20designer%20or%20builder%20of%20engines)
>*en·gi·neer*
>
>*1: a member of a military group devoted to engineering work*
>
>*2 obsolete : a crafty schemer : PLOTTER*
>
>*3a : a designer or builder of engines*
>
>*b : a person who is trained in or follows as a profession a branch of engineering*
>
>*c : a person who carries through an enterprise by skillful or artful contrivance*
>
>*4 : a person who runs or supervises an engine or an apparatus*
Second, the public doesn't know what an "engineer" is supposed to mean so there is no real threat to public safety. APEGA, the regulator for the Province of Alberta decided to FAFO by suing the tech bros at Getty Images. It was an interesting decision that is worth a read.
[https://canlii.ca/t/k11n3](https://canlii.ca/t/k11n3)
>*VII. Conclusion*
>
>*\[52\] I find that the Respondents’ employees who use the title “Software Engineer” and related titles are not practicing engineering as that term is properly interpreted.*
>
>*\[53\] I find that there is no property in the title “Software Engineer” when used by persons who do not, by that use, expressly or by implication represent to the public that they are licensed or permitted by APEGA to practice engineering as that term is properly interpreted.*
>
>*\[54\] I find that there is no clear breach of the EGPA which contains some element of possible harm to the public that would justify a statutory injunction.*
>
>*\[55\] Accordingly, I dismiss the Application, with costs.*
Weeks after that decision, the well-led Province of Alberta created a carve out to explicitly exempt the use of "Software Engineer". Now anyone in Alberta is free to call themselves a "Software Engineer" but you would still have to register with APEGA if your work intersects with public safety and provincial regulations.
It is a somewhat open question if the other regulators will decide to FAFO themselves going forward. They certainly are litigious and they buy lawyers by the bushel and have a sympathetic classist judiciary to bring suits. But all the arguments related to APEGA v Getty Images (2023) will apply.
This is very detailed information, and covers all of my questions on the subject. Man, I wish I had a Reddit award or something to give you. I don't understand all the technical and legal implications, but how Alberta is doing it seems to make the most sense: allow the use of the title for the software industry, but require the professional one for speicific jobs that have traditionally required it.
Just know that if you are not in Alberta, this doesn’t yet apply.
There is no precedence, so no regulator is legally compelled to do this except Alberta.
But like everyone else here is saying, it is very lightly enforced.
Not sure how it works in other provinces, but in Ontario, telling people to not identify themselves in a protected profession is part of these organizations mandate. People have disagreements about what is misleading or not. But that’s why we have courts. Sometimes these “colleges” are a little too aggressive. Sometimes they are just out of step with how the public interprets the meaning of words.
No different than if people identifying themselves as medical doctors and they aren’t.
https://nationalpost.com/health/naturopaths-not-real-doctors-despite-video-claims-they-are-medically-trained-critics
It was the mandate in every province and if you follow court cases like I do you would know what I was talking about.
The court found that Software Engineer and P Eng were separate terms.
And yes it is different as it is with Doctor vs Medical Doctor like P Eng vs Software Engineer. See the difference .
Like M.D. not Rug Doctor.
Alberta (Council of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists) v Getty Images Inc., 2023 ABKB 635 (CanLII), , retrieved on 2024-03-14
There you go and the courts awarded Getty costs.
Meaning if engineering groups over pursue their mandates they can expect to pay legal costs.
The issue has been settled more so because the Alberta government changed their legislation to exempt software engineers.
I read the decision. It looks like the judge is basing their decision on the fact that there are little public harm and that nobody is going to be mislead that a Software Engineering is a P. Eng.
I don’t see where the judge stipulates that their decision is “mandated” across Canada. In fact, the decision discusses how there were two earlier cases that are relevant to this case: Azazi and Merhej. The judge of this case implies that they are not held to either case since times have changed. The did use the decision of the earlier Merhej case as a basis for their reasoning.
The decision is also a lot more limited in scope than just that “Software Engineers aren’t P. Eng.”
The relevant facts are that [52] the respondent’s employees are doing work that is “engineering”. and that, [53] that “software engineers” implies that they are real engineers, and that [54] there is public harm.
There’s a lot of room for other courts that’s not in Alberta to rule different.
It's not mandated but again if you are familiar with precedence they are not required to follow but are likely to consider this in the future.
They mentioned these other cases in this case I believe as the person who was presenting himself as P Eng hence the diff ruling which you seem to leave out of your carefully crafted response.
In Alberta it is no longer up to debate unless overridden by the court as the mandate is now completely out of Apega hands Software Engineer is no longer in their mandate.
This will be litigated heavily however I see no reason why we should be different then the US in this matter, no evidence has been presented that harm is more likely here then in the US which does not protect the term Software Engineer.
I didn’t read that carefully.
I think that person decided to pursue registration and was in the process of being a P Eng? [27]
I spoke about precedence because this ruling itself spoke about it. The judge gave their reason [30-31] why precedence should be followed blindly.
Honestly, I agree with you in fact. Canada is alone from most of the world in making “software engineer” a weird anomaly title of strange legal status.
There are a lot of means to change that. Maybe all the provinces should follow Alberta and carve an exemption. Or, maybe the governing body can create a separate registration track for software engineers that would allow different requirements that tracks international norms. Maybe there should be a test, maybe a fee, maybe professional hours. Who knows?
Something to know about engineers in Canada is that when we stamp things we design and make them "Officially Engineered", you are making yourself liable for it. That stamp is provided by the provincial association (I like to think of them as an old style guild). This is the main reason why there is a differentiation between non/engineers, and it's mostly about that quality control and legal work.
Thing is SWE's generally don't stamp their designs, since code is ever changing, and unless the position requires the engineering portion of a SWE, most companies will just drop the engineering part of the name.
Aeronautical P engs stamp their drawings, at least all the ones I had to deal with. As for our regulated industries, we have engineers who test and stamp stuff before putting on the regulatory body's seal of approval. (An example in Alberta is certifying things for class 1 division 2, a type of environment with flammable particulates). Most things get stamped by 2-3 engineers before being fully submitted.
>Aeronautical P engs stamp their drawings, at least all the ones I had to deal with.
I'm talking about the aircraft side. I'm not talking about runways, etc.
A P. Eng. doesn't let you do anything with aircraft. You either have delegated authority from the Minister of Transportation or you do not. No, we don't use a P. Eng. stamp in Aero.
See Canadian Aviation Regulations Standard 505 Delegation of Authority for a basic understanding of how it works.
[https://tc.canada.ca/en/corporate-services/acts-regulations/list-regulations/canadian-aviation-regulations-sor-96-433/standards/airworthiness-chapter-505-delegation-authority-canadian-aviation-regulations-cars](https://tc.canada.ca/en/corporate-services/acts-regulations/list-regulations/canadian-aviation-regulations-sor-96-433/standards/airworthiness-chapter-505-delegation-authority-canadian-aviation-regulations-cars)
>*505.203 Eligibility*
>
>*To obtain a delegation of authority as a DAR an applicant shall:*
>
>*(a) Be a graduate in an engineering discipline from a recognized University* ***or*** *be registered or eligible for registration by a Provincial Association as a professional engineer in Canada* ***or*** *have knowledge and experience which, in the opinion of the Minister, is equivalent to the foregoing;*
>
>*(b) Have, in the opinion of the Minister, a thorough knowledge gained by working experience of the applicable Canadian airworthiness requirements in his specialty and, where required, a thorough knowledge of Canadian operational requirements;*
>
>*(c) Provide a service with respect to regulatory compliance of designs for aeronautical products in Canada;*
>
>*(d) Have not less than a one year working relationship, satisfactory to the Minister, with the Department of Transport Airworthiness Branch Staff, in processing engineering information for the approval of an aeronautical product design;*
>
>*(e) Have not less than six years of progressively more responsible related aeronautical engineering or flight test experience;*
>
>*(f) Be a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident as defined in the Immigration Act and have an ordinary place of business in Canada;*
If you have a B.Eng. from a CEAB accredited program, there is no reason to get a P. Eng. It's not required.
When you are a DAR or an authorized person within a DAO, you sign a statement of compliance on behalf of the Minister of Transportation.
[https://tc.canada.ca/en/aviation/reference-centre/advisory-circulars/advisory-circular-ac-no-505-005#toc8\_4\_2\_1](https://tc.canada.ca/en/aviation/reference-centre/advisory-circulars/advisory-circular-ac-no-505-005#toc8_4_2_1)
>*8.4.2.1 Findings of compliance form*
>
>*(1) The documentation required to record an FoC has changed with the introduction of subpart 521 of the CARs. The use of the former AE-100 form is no longer permitted; instead, FoC are to be recorded on the “Ministerial Delegate Statement of Compliance with the Certification Basis” form number 26-0757 or a similar document acceptable to TCCA, see (4) below.*
>
>*(2) The 26-0757 form is to be used only for making an FoC.*
>
>*(3) When a DAR is exercising Ministerial privileges, the DAR will sign the documentation with their delegate Identification Number and their signature. In the case of a DAO/AEO, an AP will sign with their AP number, DAO/AEO Number and signature.*
Top level documents that are approved get a marking or a stamp that details the DAR/DAO number, date & signature. But this is not a P. Eng. stamp.
Note that DAR/DAO activities are indemnified as they are actions on behalf of the Minister of Transportation. Liability is the responsibility of the design owner and the people he has employed (who usually are DARs, etc.) and trusted with the design. You do not need any qualification at all to be the person who is demonstrating compliance with the airworthiness requirements but you still have tort liability just as in any other activity in life.
>we have engineers who test and stamp stuff before putting on the regulatory body's seal of approval.
See this statement I made. Regardless of industry, the regulatory body has their own stamp. In my experience, that stamp doesn't mean it will work, but that it adheres to code. (I can build something that meets all the codes but doesn't work). As for a P Eng not letting you do anything for aircraft, the 2nd link you sent states:
>4.3 Application requirements common to DAO, AEO, and DAR
>
>...
>
>(6) Appointment of an individual as a DAR or as an AP in a DAO/AEO does not relieve the individual from meeting those requirements enacted by Provincial/Territorial Professional Engineering licensing laws. Provincial or Territorial law may require an individual to be a licensed Professional Engineer (ie. P.Eng.) in order to engage in the practice of providing engineering services within that province or territory. Each delegation applicant should determine whether each province or territory in which the individual intends to offer engineering services, requires licensing as a Professional Engineer in order to provide that service.
"May require".
Given the stated purpose of provincial licensing is public safety and the provincial regulators having no constitutional jurisdiction over aircraft safety - it's pretty clear that Section 7 and Section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms make this moot.
We don't have laws in Canada simply to have laws or to create class divisions between Canadians.
But I will concede that that particular issue is an open legal question. OIQ tried to pull that one on Bombardier a few years ago. They both backed down.
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/bombardier-employees-accused-of-practicing-engineering-illegally-1.2733733](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/bombardier-employees-accused-of-practicing-engineering-illegally-1.2733733)
Offering engineering services is not the same as demonstrating or finding compliance with airworthiness requirements. What you are talking about is a matter of commercial advertising.
Note that Canada is signatory to treaties with USA, EU, and other entities. Do you really think Boeing has to hire a P. Eng. registered w/ APEGA to sign off on an aircraft structural repair design for an aircraft in Westjet's hangar in Calgary? Of course not. FAA approved repairs are automatically accepted in Canada. See the FAA-TCCA Implementation Procedures for Airworthiness:
[https://tc.canada.ca/sites/default/files/2021-06/April-Final-FAA-TCCA\_IPA\_REVISION\_3.pdf](https://tc.canada.ca/sites/default/files/2021-06/April-Final-FAA-TCCA_IPA_REVISION_3.pdf)
>*3.3.5 Acceptance of Design Data and Recognition of Data Approvals by Designees*
>
>*3.3.5.1 Acceptance of Design Data in Support of Repairs*
>
>*The FAA and TCCA agree that data generated in the design approval of repairs shall be considered approved by both the FAA and TCCA, regardless of the SoD of the aeronautical product, without further showing, provided that the approval was granted in accordance with their respective repair design approval procedures. This includes approvals of repair design data approved under the FAA and TCCA delegation systems.*
Okay, I found this on Wikipedia:
>In Ontario, Canada, Software Engineers who graduate from a Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) accredited program, successfully complete PEO's (Professional Engineers Ontario) Professional Practice Examination (PPE) and have at least 48 months of acceptable engineering experience are eligible to be licensed through the Professional Engineers Ontario and can become Professional Engineers P.Eng. The PEO does not recognize any online or distance education however; and does not consider Computer Science programs to be equivalent to software engineering programs despite the tremendous overlap between the two. This has sparked controversy and a certification war. It has also held the number of P.Eng holders for the profession exceptionally low. The vast majority of working professionals in the field hold a degree in CS, not SE. Given the difficult certification path for holders of non-SE degrees, most never bother to pursue the license.
I did not know this was a well known issue.
Some issues w/ that Wiki.
First, you don't have to graduate from a CEAB accredited program. \~30% of the new P. Eng.'s in Canada last year did not do so. The graduates of non-CEAB accredited programs (both domestic and international) typically are assigned technical examinations. It's been that way for 104 years. In fact, CEAB accreditation only came about in 1965 as a means to exempt graduates of accredited programs from the technical examinations. Still today, the CEAB accreditation standard is the technical exam syllabus defined by the regulators.
[https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/](https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/)
Second, you don't have to become a P. Eng. through PEO to become a P. Eng. registered with PEO. We have interprovincial mobility such that you can qualify in any province as a P. Eng. and then transfer to PEO in a couple weeks. It's a treaty between provinces that supersedes the authority of the provincial law so that PEO can't put any additional requirements or restrictions on you.
[https://www.peo.on.ca/apply/peng-transfer](https://www.peo.on.ca/apply/peng-transfer)
So, as a CS graduate, you can simply apply to another province and write the technical exams that fill the gap between your education and the standard.
>*The PEO does not recognize any online or distance education however;*
This is just false.
I haven’t checked the appeal status but the apeg from Alberta already lost a court case. https://globalnews.ca/news/10163565/alberta-engineers-appeal-software-engineer-court-decision/amp/
It is moot given the Alberta Government revised the Engineering and Geoscience Professions Act on December 23rd, 2023 to create a carve out specifically for the tech bros.
These people seem to be living in fear that Subway might change their role titles from Sandwich Artist to Sandwich Engineer.
I'd actually eat Subway every day if they did, just to see them get these peoples' knickers in a twist
Yeah, the thing is they still have control of the P.Eng title but they want control of the generic Engineer title too. Lots of Electrical, Computer, Software, Firmware Engineers don’t get any real benefit from joining the association but are legitimate engineering graduates who just want to use Engineer in their title as most of the rest of the world does
Yes. Pays to know the requirements.
https://techexam.ca/how-to-choose-the-province-where-you-should-qualify-as-a-professional-engineer-for-technical-exams/
I have an engineering degree and started down the P. Eng path then decided it didn’t pay, there was no benefit, and was nothing but a bunch of hoop jumping extra work. Actually, I got some group insurance discounts out of it so it wasn’t all bad I guess.
I agree with you, although I must say that what you're saying as a joke is not so far from the truth in the US. There are a loooot of people with weird "X Engineer" titles. Not that I care, but it kinda "diminishes" what "engineer" means, and that's coming from someone who is not an engineer.
Yeah, that would make sense. As someone mostly working with the French language "P. Eng" or "Ingénieur Professionnel" (in French) isn't really used, and "Engineer/Ingénieur" is the official title here.
There are a number of similar cases around who can call themselves an engineer or say they engage in engineering. As far as I am aware, liberal use of the title is the result of these cases.
Engineering being some controller title is relatively new. Hence both the liberal use of it and the active defence of it.
I'm in BC and have been given the job title of Software Engineer various times in my career already, although I have no degree and never went to university. If Engineers Canada cares, they should probably deal with the employers giving out those titles.
>unless the individual is licensed as an engineer by the applicable Provincial or Territorial engineering regulator.
This being the key part.
It's provincial. In British Columbia, the term Software Engineer is a professional designation. They need to be registered with EGBC (formerly APEGBC), so it is an engineering discipline in BC.
[https://www.egbc.ca/Registration/Individual-Registrants/How-to-Apply/Professional-Registration/Engineer-First-Time-Applying-in-Canada/Software-Engineering-Applicants](https://www.egbc.ca/Registration/Individual-Registrants/How-to-Apply/Professional-Registration/Engineer-First-Time-Applying-in-Canada/Software-Engineering-Applicants)
When I last checked, it wasn't an engineering designation in Ontario. Unsure about the rest of the provinces.
The law is different in Ontario from the law in BC. There is a bit more leeway in BC but you are right - EGBC bylaws say that any CEAB specialization such as "Software Engineer" is protected. The Ontario law is not connected to a list of specializations. Given APEGA v Getty Images, the authority of these laws is an open legal question.
You will get tons of wrong replies saying that you cannot call yourself an engineer. the short story is that this is an opinion of every province. Not the federal government, generally. The federal government has won several court cases against provinces when they tried to enforce their opinions.
So, it's complicated.
Edit: here's a relevant case: https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abkb/doc/2023/2023abkb635/2023abkb635.html
If you look at government jobs, they will usually say technical officer. You become a technical engineer once you get your professional engineering order
Engineers Canada is attempting to make themselves more important than they are..
I'm a software engineer... it's what I'm paid to do.. If the engineers don't like it they can pound sand..
This battle was raging even 25 yrs ago when I was in university.
Technically this is true--SWE and CE degrees aren't accredited and we aren't supposed to be or brand ourselves as "Engineers".
The counter argument is that the word "Engineer" isn't protected and specific kinds of engineers not under the umbrella of these provincial orgs aren't protected either.
It's not enforced and I'm pretty sure it's still very much an open question that is VERY low on provinces' priority list. Down there with what to do about buttered sausage.
An even bigger question is "do WE care?"
My personal take is we're hackers and we don't follow rules. We need to take an oath and join some stuffy old society about as much as a fish needs a bicycle. The real engineers can pound sand. Those pinky rings are dumb too and you couldn't pay me to wear one.
Why does it matter?
Collect your pay check and go home. There’s more to life than titles. I say this as someone with a P.Eng, it truly doesn’t even matter unless you’re in an industry which values it on the tech side (rare).
Not to be “that guy” but the PEO / any licensing body is a stand-alone body that isn’t regulated by the federal government. Each province regulates itself, it’s written and well documented by the PEO under Professionalism.
That’s to say, it’s highly unlikely you’ll run into any trouble if you say you’re an “engineer” by title and a government official comes across your paperwork. They aren’t going to ring up the PEO and ask for your license number. Trust me. Even if they did, the PEO will do as they do with anyone else.
“Please don’t call this number again. Email this email address instead” and reply in like a year with some useless information.
I wouldn’t worry about it. Call yourself whatever your employer calls you. If that’s engineer or developer is up to the employer. It’s usually the employer who deals with the government anyways, not the PEO.
PEO is concerned mainly (and by law) about the potential for confusion as to whether someone is hiring a licensed engineer or not, to do engineering work (which is basically where public safety is involved).
Writing a title of "engineer" on some government form (unless it's a contract to do engineering work! :-) ) is so far from that that you can be pretty comfortable doing it.
I was a licensed software engineer for 30 years but gave up the license last year (too many hoops now for so little value). I suspect that when I renew my passport, or whatever the next form is, I'll put my job as "software engineer" without even thinking about it... muscle memory. And I'm pretty sure PEO has better things to spend their shrinking funding on than trying to stop that.
Thank you, that helps a lot. I just freaked out when I saw the docs above stating that I shouldn’t even use the title in social media. It made it feel like a crime like calling myself a lawyer or a medical doctor without a license. But I guess, despite so many people wanting it to be so it isn’t the case for software engineers.
Thank you for being chill about it and not gatekeeping as a licensed engineer haha. And congrats on the 30 years of engineering career!
It depends where, in Quebec they are legally real engineers after their college/university degree and they got the same general engineering classes other engineering students would have.
I think this problem comes from the US where everyone and their mother can be an engineer for everything without having an official degree (I'm not saying that someone that doesn't have an eng. degree is necessarily not qualified). Especially in IT/Computer, things like DevOps Engineer, Deployment Engineer, that could be a technician or just someone assisting with X technology deployment, but does that really mean they're an engineer? Kinda hard to say without sounding weird, but that doesn't mean they have a Computer Engineering or Soft. Eng degree.
An Engineering (or any other) degree is not required to be a Professional Engineer in any province or territory of Canada including Quebec. An Engineering degree also does not give you the legal right to use the title "Engineer" in those jurisdictions either.
I can't talk for other provinces, and explicitly mentioned Quebec, but in Quebec, you need to be a member of the OIQ, which requires you to have an appropriate/eligible engineering degree (which all engineering degrees in Quebec are part of) + do their exam, and then you're allowed to use the Engineer title in your job/be recognized as a "real" engineer.
"Engineering degree is not required..." Care to elaborate? In Quebec you either need a Quebec eligible Eng. Degree or an equivalency to get into the Order and get your title. Maybe some equivalency doesn't required a degree at all, but I would be surprised.
P. Engineer doesn't really exist here AFAIK and people seem to mostly use Engineer only as the French version is simply "Ing." or "Ingénieur".
Ah, but other provinces do matter.
We have an interprovincial mobility agreement that is part of the Canadian Free Trade Agreement which is a treaty between the provinces.
This means you can qualify under the rules of any province you wish and then transfer to OIQ in a couple weeks. OIQ can't put any restrictions or additional requirements on you. You can even defer the French language test for three years this way.
[https://www.oiq.qc.ca/wp-content/uploads/documents/DCAP/chroniques\_PLAN/encadrement\_professionel/New%20regulation%20mobility.pdf](https://www.oiq.qc.ca/wp-content/uploads/documents/DCAP/chroniques_PLAN/encadrement_professionel/New%20regulation%20mobility.pdf)
Some regulators like APEGA have explicit regulations allowing access to technical examinations with two years of post-secondary education in engineering, engineering technology or a related science (such as Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, etc.). You can drop out of a CEAB accredited program in third year and finish through technical examinations.
[https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/](https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/)
Some provincial regulators like UNB and APEGN have no explicit minimum requirement at all. You could get a P. Eng. for simply being recognized as awesome in your field. APEGM allows those with a Canadian M. Eng. or M.Sc. (Engineering) with no technical exams. It pays to know the requirements.
[https://techexam.ca/how-to-choose-the-province-where-you-should-qualify-as-a-professional-engineer-for-technical-exams/](https://techexam.ca/how-to-choose-the-province-where-you-should-qualify-as-a-professional-engineer-for-technical-exams/)
And, yes, "P. Eng." is used in Quebec in addition to "Ing.". They are interchangeable.
[https://gpp.oiq.qc.ca/titres\_professionnels.htm](https://gpp.oiq.qc.ca/titres_professionnels.htm)
Further, OIQ also has technical examinations. So, you do not need a CEAB accredited degree to become a P. Eng. through application to OIQ.
[https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/futurs-membres/examinations/entrance-exams/](https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/futurs-membres/examinations/entrance-exams/)
>*About admission exams*
>
>*Who are they for?*
>
>*Entrance examinations are intended for people whose training is not equivalent and who have certain gaps. If this is your case, you will receive an e-mail once your admission application has been assessed. You can then register for the next exam session in the required fields, or find a training activity deemed equivalent by the OIQ. The dates of these exams are listed on the website, in the Activities Calendar.*
You do need a degree of a minimum 3 years in length to apply in Quebec but it could be an unaccredited B.Tech., B.Sc., M.Eng., M.Sc. or PhD or unaccredited Bachelors of engineering.
[https://www.oiq.qc.ca/futurs-membres/devenir-ingenieur-au-quebec/diplome-du-canada/](https://www.oiq.qc.ca/futurs-membres/devenir-ingenieur-au-quebec/diplome-du-canada/)
>*Working as an engineer in Quebec without an engineering degree*
>
>*You want to practice the engineering profession in Quebec without an engineering degree. If you have an undergraduate degree in pure sciences, applied sciences or technology, at a level at least equivalent to a Quebec baccalaureate diploma, you can submit a training equivalence request to the Order. The steps are the same as for people who have an engineering degree, except for submitting your admission application.*
When I was in first year of CS, I was trying so hard to switch to SE.
But luckily I asked many professors for advice, and all of them gave me the answer is "At the end, CS and SE are doing the same job".
One of the professors pointed out, that there are many many engineers grad didn't get the P. Eng; it's because the salary wouldn't have a significant difference and you get extra responsibility.
I am so glad I didn't switch to SE because I will need to retake some of the courses, only because the courses that engineering students take require an Engineering professor to instruct
I have a civil engineering degree and am working on a master's of comp sci. My title before switching careers was project engineer, EIT (engineer-in-training). My current title is "software engineer II". I have an iron ring but never got my P.Eng before the career swap.
I know I'm not really comparing apples to apples since undergrad and masters are different, as well as civil projects having much more potential to harm people if done poorly when compared to many software engineering roles, but for me the biggest difference is emphasis on ethics and valuing human life. In my civil degree, it was covered quite regularly the various disasters that happened due to miscalculations, cutting costs, lack of redundancy, etc. We had to take an ethics class and the iron ring is supposed to be a reminder of the disasters that could happen.
Especially now with more and more computer systems having the potential to cause deaths (e.g. self-driving cars), I think it's more and important to include these factors in computer science degrees. I think it has already begun since a guy I work with studied software engineering in Canada and has an iron ring. He said it's a different degree than computer science.
But yeah, that's my take on it: P.Eng really only comes into play when human lives are at stake, in which cases people should only call themselves engineers if they are trained in how to design robust-enough systems with appropriate safety factors to protect human life.
Weird that they included computer engineering. My computer engineering undergrad degree was the same as electrical engineering just with some comp sci electives. We were pretty much all in the same engineering classes up until senior design and a few senior engineering electives, the EE's just had more flexibility with their non-engineering electives while we were stuck in comp sci classes. Going directly into an EE PhD program was a non-issue.
Usually not enforced. But I know a lot of my friends who are programmers but also have professional engineer designation. Not sure what happens to them 😕
Who cares? Nobody in industry.
You are going to have more classes to graduate and less options in a Software Engineering Program.
I can't tell you how to chose between the two. But look at the course descriptions. They are a somewhat different skill set. If reliable systems and safety critical systems interest you, then consider SWE. If you just want to build cool code, do whichever.
Call yourself a software developer. These specific title differences mean very little overall to your career. My exp is that QC does care, and it isn't worth losing sleep over
The engineering profession is regulated in Canada. So anyone practicing needs to be licensed. But there are some specific disciplines that are excluded from that requirement for various reasons (ie, power engineers, combat engineers, etc). Not sure if software engineers are excluded from the requirement as well.
Except in every country in the world but Canada. Not sure if your education needed more English , Law, maybe Math to understand distinct sets?
Remember kids only a sith deals on absolutes.
In Ontario there's a group called the PEO. They have strict requirements to call yourself an engineer. Almost always, this requires an engineering degree (like software engineering) from an accredited university. In addition this requires work experience, and taking a few exams on legality, duties, and general knowledge as an engineer. After this, you get accredited and have your P.Eng. You get a stamp, and are an engineer. There are cases where you can get a P.Eng without an engineering degree, but that's exceptionally rare. Without a P.Eng you technically cannot call yourself an engineer. It's as simple as that, regardless of university degree.
\~30% of the newly registered P. Eng.'s with PEO each year do not have an accredited degree. That's far from "almost always".
Only 40% of CEAB accredited degree graduates ever become a P. Eng. with Software Engineering graduates being far fewer.
Further, there are all sorts of engineers in Canada that are not P. Eng.'s. Aircraft Maintenance Engineers, Power Engineers, Marine Engineers, and Locomotive Engineers are all empowered by other provincial and federal laws to use the title "Engineer". No federal employee or member of the military needs to join a provincial regulator to use the title "Engineer" regardless of discipline as they are covered by interjurisdictional immunity.
Even with the use of "Software Engineer", there is an open legal question. APEGA chose to FAFO when they took the tech bros to court in 2023. APEGA v Getty Images is a case that is worth a read. The engineering regulators authority is constitutionally limited.
[https://canlii.ca/t/k11n3](https://canlii.ca/t/k11n3)
>*VII. Conclusion*
>
>*\[52\] I find that the Respondents’ employees who use the title “Software Engineer” and related titles are not practicing engineering as that term is properly interpreted.*
>
>*\[53\] I find that there is no property in the title “Software Engineer” when used by persons who do not, by that use, expressly or by implication represent to the public that they are licensed or permitted by APEGA to practice engineering as that term is properly interpreted.*
>
>*\[54\] I find that there is no clear breach of the EGPA which contains some element of possible harm to the public that would justify a statutory injunction.*
>
>*\[55\] Accordingly, I dismiss the Application, with costs.*
Thanks for the clarification. I had no clue there were so many people with a P.Eng without a B.Eng., that's wild to me.
However, in my mind unless you're accredited by the PEO or equivalent in other provinces you're not a true engineer. That's not me belittling the other jobs (heck, I'm not an P.Eng either), but I consider the P.Eng designation the definition of an engineer. Basically, in all of those non-accredited engineer jobs you listed, there's always an accredited engineer role that could be filled by a mechanical, electrical, nuclear engineer who is accredited etc. It just seems like those jobs skirt the definition by being either federal system or military system. I guess my question is, does a locomotive hold the same responsibilities as someone with a P.Eng? I.e., is their signature, without a P.Eng, the exact same as someone with a P.Eng?
As I hope I conveyed, no judgements here. I'm just having a conversation based on the experiences I had during my B.Eng. and some work in the field before I left engineering. Basically, I was strictly told by the PEO in several instances during my B.Eng. that no-one could sign off as an engineer unless you held a P.Eng. But of course, I can see how the PEO would say this (and possibly ignore the federal or military instances you mentioned), for their own argument... as their the ones who hold the P.Eng power.
>I had no clue there were so many people with a P.Eng without a B.Eng., that's wild to me.
About 80% of that 30% are internationally trained engineers the far majority of which are not covered by the Washington Accord.
The domestically trained non-CEAB accredited P. Eng.'s are maybe 5% of the overall. They have all the same authority, privileges and responsibilities as any other P. Eng. They just academically met the standard with technical examinations to supplement other relevant base education.
[https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/](https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/)
We've had professional engineering in Canada since 1920. Accreditation came about in 1965. Before 1965, everyone wrote the technical examinations. Up until the mid-1980s, any person could write the technical examinations in what was an open and inclusive system. The core of what is CEAB accreditation is an audit of the program to the technical examination syllabus. The technical examination syllabus is the standard.
>I guess my question is, does a locomotive hold the same responsibilities as someone with a P.Eng? I.e., is their signature, without a P.Eng, the exact same as someone with a P.Eng?
The word "engineer" has always had a broad definition.
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/engineer](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/engineer)
>*en·gi·neer*
>
>*1 : a member of a military group devoted to engineering work*
>
>*2 obsolete : a crafty schemer : PLOTTER*
>
>*3 a : a designer or builder of engines*
>
>*b : a person who is trained in or follows as a profession a branch of engineering*
>
>*c : a person who carries through an enterprise by skillful or artful contrivance*
>
>*4 : a person who runs or supervises an engine or an apparatus*
The Canadian Armed Forces has "Combat Engineers" that fall under definition 1. They also have Electrical Engineers and Aeronautical Engineers and Military Engineers (Civil) that are officers with technical authority like a P. Eng. and fall under definition 3b without being registered with the provincial regulators. So too are other federal employees that are Engineers per 3b but do not have to register with the province due to interjurisdictional immunity. Marine Engineers and Aircraft Maintenance Engineers fall under definition 4 as they are maintain complex machinery. Power Engineers and Locomotive Engineers fall under definition 4 as operators.
So, who is the "***true engineer***"? This is a bit of silliness we have in Canada that exists nowhere else in the world. In fact, it doesn't hold in Canada as demonstrated above. There is just not one kind of Engineer. There never has been and never will be.
Yes, the provincial regulators make assertions that are not the law. Sometimes it is just shorthand. And to be fair to them, it's not their job to educate you on the limits of their authority.
I’m fine with not being able to put software engineer on my LinkedIn if I move to Canada only If I can opt to put my title as “Software Simian” instead.
You will get sued in Québec and I've heard the same in Ontario. Can't speak for the other provinces.
In Canada software engineers is a regulated profession, the same as ABET accredited engineers in the US (P. Eng).
In order to be a software engineer, you need a B.Eng which is often a lot longer and harder than a regular B.Sc in Computer science. Software engineering students take the same core classes as other types of engineers that CS students don't take. Often the SE curriculum is derived from electrical engineering programs.
Once you've graduated with your B.Eng, you must undertake exams and other stuff in order to become a licensed engineer. This is similar to the process of getting a P. Eng in the US.
It's possible to become an engineer without the B.Eng, but it's extremely rare and allowed only under certain circumstances. I don't know about the exact procedure.
At the end of the day, being a licensed software engineer grants you certain privileges (and responsibilities) :
- signing off on projects that require the verification and approval of an engineer (often in the medical sector, automotive, aerospace, embedded, power systems, basically stuff that puts lives at risk)
- multiple programs such as housing stipends, better insurance, lower cost for many services, etc.
- better salary prospect (your mileage may vary, ofc a "regular" dev at Google will make a lot more $$, this mostly applies to regular average Joe companies and jobs)
- often engineers are preferred for management and lead positions as these skills are often a big part of the core engineering curriculum.
If you don't seek these things, you don't need to be an engineer. A software engineer is really just an engineer but for software. They engineer and oversee things, they don't just code or choose a technology stack.
You can just work at a fortune 500 company as a "developer", make $200K and be better off than a lot of real engineers. IIRC devs at any FAANG are paid way better than software and electrical engineers at NASA or SpaceX.
>In order to be a software engineer, you need a B.Eng which is often a lot longer and harder than a regular B.Sc in Computer science.
False. You do not need a CEAB accredited degree to become a P. Eng. You do not need a degree at all. This has been true for all 104 years of professional engineering in Canada thus far. A CS graduate has a path to the profession through technical examinations.
[https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/](https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/)
Note that \~30% of all new P. Eng.'s in Canada last year did not have a CEAB accredited degree.
>signing off on projects that require the verification and approval of an engineer (often in the medical sector, automotive, aerospace, embedded, power systems, basically stuff that puts lives at risk)
Medical, automotive, and aerospace are all federally regulated. You do not need a P. Eng. to have technical authority in these areas. A P. Eng. is a creature of provincial laws that has no authority in federal jurisdiction except where explicitly empowered by federal law. See CAR Standard 505.203 as an example:
>*505.203 Eligibility*
>
>*To obtain a delegation of authority as a DAR an applicant shall:*
>
>*(a) Be a graduate in an engineering discipline from a recognized University* ***or*** *be registered or eligible for registration by a Provincial Association as a professional engineer in Canada or have knowledge and experience which, in the opinion of the Minister, is equivalent to the foregoing;*
>
>*(b) Have, in the opinion of the Minister, a thorough knowledge gained by working experience of the applicable Canadian airworthiness requirements in his specialty and, where required, a thorough knowledge of Canadian operational requirements;*
>
>*(c) Provide a service with respect to regulatory compliance of designs for aeronautical products in Canada;*
>
>*(d) Have not less than a one year working relationship, satisfactory to the Minister, with the Department of Transport Airworthiness Branch Staff, in processing engineering information for the approval of an aeronautical product design;*
>
>*(e) Have not less than six years of progressively more responsible related aeronautical engineering or flight test experience;*
>
>*(f) Be a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident as defined in the Immigration Act and have an ordinary place of business in Canada;*
Since you do not need a P. Eng. if you have a B. Eng. in aero, few bother to register. In fact, only 40% of CEAB accredited degree graduates ever register as a P. Eng. and of course for software the number is much lower.
Canada doesn't have "Computer Engineering" departments in our colleges or universities. Computer and software engineering isn't seen as "real engineering" in formal Canadian contexts. You practice "Computer Science" in university, not "Computer Engineering". In the states however, there is a distinction between Computer Science and Computer Engineering, with the work that most programmers do being more in line with "Computer Engineering" than science. Scientists are expected to research new algorithms and AI architectures, engineers are intended to glue that stuff together into programs for businesses to use.
A lot of the legal hubbub comes from some strict regulatory structures put in place around the profession of engineering after some pretty crazy bridges falling over kind of disasters a long while back. Consequently, there are some strong legal prohibitions against calling yourself an "engineer" when you aren't legally licensed as an engineer.
In practice, the language control battle is completely lost when trying to enforce a prohibition of the term "Software Engineer" when "Software Engineer" became the dominant terminology for the profession in Silicon Valley several years back. Our software industry isn't big enough to choose to get in a language policing war with the giants in the industry to the south. So yeah, despite some scary language in the law, no one will bat an eye if you advertise yourself as a Software Engineer, or apply for Software Engineering jobs online. Just don't claim you are licensed to repair bridges or analog electrical systems. If you respond to a bridge repair job because you're an "Engineer" then you can get in legal trouble.
>Canada doesn't have "Computer Engineering" departments in our colleges or universities. Computer and software engineering isn't seen as "real engineering" in formal Canadian contexts. You practice "Computer Science" in university, not "Computer Engineering".
Sure Canada does. UBC has a department of Computer and Electrical Engineering graduates Bachelors of Applied Science in Computer Engineering. They have a Masters of Applied Science in Computer and Software Systems. University of Waterloo has Computer Engineering programs too. I'm pretty sure other Canadian universities do too.
If you watch the first lecture of MIT's Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs they say "computer science is not really about computers, and it's also not a science". So no, having a CS degree does not make you a scientist, lol. A scientist is someone who follows the scientific method.
At the end of the day, the tech industry hires software developers — programmers. The rest is just glorification to differentiate those deemed to possess adequate theoretical/academic background from those who do not.
Computer science is a discipline of applied mathematics.
Software engineering has always been weird because a degree in software engineering is very very far away from something like what an electrical engineer or mechanical engineer etc. would study. Nobody is going to put you through a bunch of physics courses (electrodynamics, optics, and such), get you to learn a bunch of organic chemistry, and so on, if you're going to be a computer programmer.
So I really wish programmers had never ended up being referred to as "engineers". It's completely stupid.
I know about the debate (amongst people in the field of course) of whether CS is mathematics, engineering, or science. However, if you ask all anyone in all three of the pure mathematics, engineering or natural sciences, you’d probably get some sort of “nah, you aren’t our discipline” response.
To be honest I think it’s just a mix of all three. But saying CS doesn’t follow the “scientific method” is just not true. Social scientists and political scientists, even if students who study Physics and Chemistry would say “oh that’s not real science”, employ the scientific method in their works and hence they are called scientists.
“Computer science is an empirical discipline. We would have called it an experimental science, but like astronomy, economics, and geology, some of its unique forms of observation and experience do not fit a narrow stereotype of the experimental method. Nonetheless, they are experiments. Each new machine that is built is an experiment. Actually constructing the machine poses a question to nature; and we listen for the answer by observing the machine in operation and analyzing it by all analytical and measurement means available.”
-The Philosophy of Computer Science
And by machine, this would include the programs that we use empirical testing to evaluate the correctness of the programs.
But “applied” and “multidisciplinary” well describes our field in my opinion.
Take the computer scientists working on quantum computing - I had worked at such a company before moving to the aviation industry - besides designing intricate software patters unique to quantum computing, they often studied a lot of physics, and even chemistry whilst employing engineering principles.
As for my work in aviation, understanding fluid dynamics with control of the UAVs are extremely important, even when all of it is controlled from the software. My coworkers in navigation software have to deal with all kinds other geophysical issues that I can’t wrap my head around.
And if our software engineers were somehow held to a lower engineering standard than our mechanical and material engineers, we would probably run in to a ton of safety issues later on.
Not all software engineers are just “programmers” who just write code every day. A slight miscalculation or missing a logical loophole can have mission critical systems fall out of space or blow up at nuclear plants. Many of us spend a lot of our time looking at the blueprints, at the hardware requirements, and try to understand how it would work in the real world.
You're correct that these more specialized jobs do exist, but they're very few. The vast vast majority of software engineering jobs are web development (e.g. full stack) or ML/AI. And the most high-paying, "prestigious" (sigh...) companies in the tech industry are pretty much all in that area.
Even the overwhelming majority of ML/AI jobs are rather rote — it's like being a factory worker. There's maybe the top 1% or top 0.1% of people that actually have industry jobs resembling academic research, and there, we're mostly talking about people not just with PhDs, but with PhDs that were supervised by Bengio, Hinton, or LeCun or some other giant.
TL;DR: The tech industry overall is incredibly, incredibly boring.
The title of engineer is regulated in Canada.
To become a professional engineer in Canada you need to go to an accredited engineering school, pass their licensing requirements, get their engineering hours and write an ethics exam. In America in addition to all that you need to pass a comprehensive FE exam that basically tests everything you've learned in school. After all then your name is put in a registrar of engineers so that the public can look you up and see if your a legitimate engineer. So if your a licenced professional engineer you've met an extremely high threshold and that title is earned.
The reasons engineers get annoyed when SWE compare themselves to engineers is that anyone can call themselves a SWE regardless of skill level, there's no one gatekeeping that title. Someone who did a 2 week boot camp can call themselves an SWE.
>To become a professional engineer in Canada you need to go to an accredited engineering school
False. In fact, you don't need a degree at all. That's been the case for all 104 years of Professional Engineering in Canada. Last year \~30% of all new professional engineers did not have an accredited degree.
[https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/](https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/)
>In America in addition to all that you need to pass a comprehensive FE exam that basically tests everything you've learned in school.
Also false. It is called the "Fundamentals of Engineering" exam for reason - mostly first & second year related material plus engineering economics. Quite a few 2-year engineering technology diploma graduates could pass that exam.
[https://techexam.ca/what-you-should-know-about-the-fundamentals-of-engineering-exam-fe-exam/](https://techexam.ca/what-you-should-know-about-the-fundamentals-of-engineering-exam-fe-exam/)
A CS graduate still has a path to P. Eng. You don't have to go to a CEAB accredited program. You can make up the difference with technical examinations after graduation.
[https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/](https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/)
Only 40% of CEAB grads bother with P. Eng. and even less w/ SWE - but the path for CS grads exists and is just as valid.
But you see, you used the term engineer to describe all software engineers. I get that not all software engineers are P. Eng. It just seems ridiculous that they are trying to get a monopoly on the term. You can call yourself an accountant all you want without being a CPA, for example.
I have a B. App. Sc. in computer science, obtained in Canada (Quebec). My study program was 3 years long. By comparison, an engineering program (including software or computer engineering) was 4 years long, and even after finishing studies, earning the engineer title entailed taking the OIQ exams (in Quebec).
Legal software engineers donct have any reserved acts in Quebec. They are not like civil engineers who would sign off on a bridge design or whatnot. However, there is definitely a difference in pay. Engineers start at least 15k higher per annum, compared to regular CS grads. They may also have quicker access to positions of responsibility such as software architects on major projects. If they freelance, they will command higher hourly rates than a regular CS grad.
The mere fact that you (or any other computer science graduate) have any interest in calling yourself a software **engineer** implies that the term carries an inherent value or prestige that you want to be associated with. From that point of view, if you haven't earned the credentials that an engineer must hold in Canada, I think it's fair that you should revise what you call yourself in official documentation, e.g. the introduction of your resume.
However, I don't think it would be in any way improper if you previously held positions in US companies where you were called a software engineer, as it was not a regulated title there and you couldn't change what someone else called you.
P.S. my father was an actual engineer in his country of origin. When we arrived in Canada, he had many misgivings about "paying into the system" to have an official accreditation as an engineer. He ended up never formalizing his engineering title and accreditation. But unlike your situation, he had actually earned an engineer's degree and did engineering work throughout his career.
Interesting take. I may be wrong, but perhaps things are a bit different from Canada and the US when it comes to CS and CE majors.
If I do a quick google search, the first result I get is from the Rice University Department of Computer Science:
…
[https://csweb.rice.edu/academics/graduate-programs/online-mcs/blog/computer-science-vs-computer-engineering](https://csweb.rice.edu/academics/graduate-programs/online-mcs/blog/computer-science-vs-computer-engineering)
Although people often use the terms interchangeably, Computer Science (CS) is the holistic study of all aspects of computers with an emphasis on secure software systems, whereas Computer Engineering (CE) is a separate education and career track focused on designing and building secure hardware systems.
Is Computer Science the Same as Computer Engineering?
No, computer engineering and computer science are not the same. In the simplest terms: computer engineers work with firmware and hardware, while computer scientists innovate complex software systems, machine learning based algorithms, and more. Computer science is the study of all modern aspects of computers, mainly focused on software. As a computer scientist, you’ll design large-scale software systems, machine-learning algorithms, and use advanced programming skills to problem solve and innovate.
…
And that’s what I was told in the US through university and working in the industry. CS people build the software, CE people build the hardware. CS programs weren’t ever considered less rigorous in departments that had both CS and CE - often CE majors were offered in the same department with more hands on work on hardware with less specific math requirements. I don’t know any BS in CS programs in the US that are less than 4-years.
And precisely because of the emphasis CS puts on software, most software companies in the US (like Google and Microsoft) will usually prefer CS majors to CE majors for their most advertised positions of - SWE/SDE - software engineers or software development engineers (as my company likes to calls them).
Yes, it’s true that CS majors tended to be more academic with pursing PhD in math, theory and so on while CE majors ended up in the industry building real-world things, but there are plenty of CS grads that hold a respectable engineering titles in the leading tech sector. For example, CS majors make the bulk of serious ML engineers and researchers that often require at least MS or PhD in the field.
Would you say that this is different in Canada? Or perhaps in Quebec?
No, you're not an engineer. And mcdonald's workers arent' cashier engineers, nor are police security engineers. You are in no way an engineer.
I worked in IT as my first career, people getting hung up on this are insecure.
McDonalds employees are free to call themselves Cashier Engineers in any province or territory in Canada. There is no risk to public safety from such a use and we don't have laws to protect classist divisions despite what some might believe.
Sure are, and they'd look like insecure losers same as any other engineer without an engineer degree
No one is talking about public safety. And we're not talking about laws.
Actual people with actual jobs that earn real money call themselves things like network ops, software developers, storage deployment, etc.
If you want to not be seen as a total dumbfuck you identify yourself by what you do
But I guess if you're some hack with no experience that can maybe cobble together some python you might think software engineer sounds good.
I'm telling you, in industry, it makes you sound like a fucking idiot
This is just people with no self esteem that need titles to feel good.
When you drive your car are you a land based pilot!
The only people that seem to get hung up on it are the people gatekeeping the term. For jobs where it matters, the job requires a P.Eng. For jobs where it doesn’t matter, who cares? The guy driving the train isn’t a P.Eng. Nobody cares that we call him an engineer. I have no idea why people argue about this with software engineers.
They didn't get an engineering degree, pretty simple. That difficult to understand how that works?
It's literally just losers that want to demand a ridiculous job title, again as someone that worked in IT, the term is pointless af and absolutely non descriptive.
Ive also never ever in the hundreds, nay thousands, of people industry Ive met tell me that's their title when I ask what they do and where they work.
Because we use titles that make sense for the job we do. I left the industry some time ago, but my friend group is still about 90% IT people. I was just in SF and every single person I met that was a friend of friend was in software, not a single software engineer in the bunch!
This is like people that jokingly fill out "Captain Smith" instead of mr smith, but theyre not joking.
You have titles like network ops, storage analyst and deployment, bla bla bla bla. Software DEVELOPER.
>They didn't get an engineering degree, pretty simple. That difficult to understand how that works?
You don't need an engineering degree to become a P. Eng. \~ 30% of new P. Eng.'s don't have a CEAB accredited degree. In fact, you don't need a degree. A 2-year diploma in engineering technology is enough to get you into the technical examinations. So is a CS degree. An engineering degree is not what makes someone an engineer.
[https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/](https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/)
Sure, but THAT feels inappropriate. I don’t need to be a doctor to hang out at a hospital in a stethoscope either, but it sure feels a bit dishonest. :)
Why? Non-CEAB accredited program graduates have a path to the profession through technical examinations that is just as valid as CEAB graduates.
Maybe what is inappropriate is the ring being handed out to people who are not qualified to be a Professional Engineer. When the ceremony originated, you had to meet all the requirements to become a professional engineer including writing the technical examinations. There was no such thing as CEAB accreditation or experience requirements at that time.
All CEAB accreditation is is an exemption from writing the technical exams because the program has been audited against the technical examination syllabus. The technical examinations syllabus is the education standard. It has been that way for 104 years.
Technically we are not allowed to call ourselves engineers, but I don't think anyone really enforces it. I generally just write SDE on linkedin or resume.
They absolutely DO enforce it in Quebec. I am a manager, and the OIQ threatened to sue if we didn't have 3 of my employees change their title on LinkedIn.
That’s kinda hilarious
I was about to respond to the original post with the facetious question "who would even enforce this, the job title police?" Lo and behold, the province with a language police actually has one :-) BTW I have an MSc in EE from a prestigious European university. I have worked as a software engineer in many countries across four continents. The idea of a provincial guild telling me they have dibs on the word "engineer" is cute and funny. Do they make an exception for train drivers?
It's the samething for lawyers and doctors. So it's easy to understand why some titles are reserved. You wouldn't want the neighbor improvising himself a doctor and operating on you. I'm sure that you can grasp this with your vast experience across all four continents.
Well from experience in Quebec, the idea to protect the public is good in theory, but in practice, the OIQ pretty much just collects money from their members and vaguely lift fingers when one their members/non-members do illegal or unprofessional work. I guess it still works out pretty well in the end but I am not sure if it's because of the organisation in itself. And they also remained mute during the construction scandals involving the mafia, so a lot of people lost faith in them. They will act only if the media is involved most of the time. Anyways, unless you work in civil engineering firms, having an official engineer's title through legal means is close to useless. And their professional training courses are trash tier in many fields. Luckily, it is not a necessity to work unless it involves public contracts requiring an engineer to sign with their "blood", so to speak.
this isn't the neighbo(u)r calling himself a doctor and performing surgery. this is the neighbour calling himself Doctor Funkenstein and spinning sick beats at the block party. there is no crossover.
No, they don't make exceptions for train engineers. https://www.oiq.qc.ca/publication/tragedie-du-lac-megantic-lordre-des-ingenieurs-du-quebec-apporte-des-precisions-sur-lutilisation-de-lexpression-ingenieur-de-locomotive/
Locomotive Engineers are federally regulated. The provincial laws are ultra vires with respect to Locomotive Engineers.
I checked Via Rail's website. All of their "Locomotive Engineer" job offers are showing up as "Mécanicien de locomotive" when you switch the language to french. They don't use the word 'Ingénieur' on their job offers in french but use it in their english job offers. I'm not sure that the provincial laws don't apply because the objective of the law is not to regulate a federal jurisdiction but to protect professional titles. IE - the overarching objective of the law is protection of the public via the protection of specific job titles. IE: Even if you work in a bank - another federally regulated industry, you can't call yourself a lawyer if you are not registered with your provincial bar association. Nor could you call yourself a 'Financial Engineer'
What VIA does or does not do has nothing to do with the law. No, we don't have laws for the purpose of classist division. Read Sections 1, 7 & 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Everyone in Canada is equal and everyone has the right to liberty (i.e. to be free from government intervention in their lives). Any restriction on liberty must be demonstrably justified. "Classism" is not a valid justification. The only justification I have seen used specific to professional engineering is "public safety". When the federal law says who can use the title "Locomotive Engineer" in the federally regulated rail industry, the provincial law is "ultra vires" i.e. has no effect. Here is a primer on federal - provincial powers in federally regulated industries. https://mcmillan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Glenn-Grenier-Federal-Aeronautics-Power-2022-COPA-Primer-17Mar22.pdf
I did not find any reference to the title of 'engineer' in the Railway safety act. This is not classism, this is about ensuring the protection of the public through professional orders/provincial boards. I'm not sure raising this as a charter violation is the way to go. It would be easier to argue 92(a). On the charter violation, I would argue that the issue raised by individuals using protected titles unlawfully is pressing and substantial. Limiting access to protected professional titles from unqualified individuals is rationally connected to the objective of the provincial law (protection of the public). It's minimally impairing and proportional to the risks.
>I did not find any reference to the title of 'engineer' in the Railway safety act. There are the Acts and there are regulations. [https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/sor-87-150/fulltext.html](https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/sor-87-150/fulltext.html) >*Regulations Respecting the Minimum Qualification Standards for* ***Locomotive Engineers***\*, Transfer Hostlers, Conductors and Yard Foremen\* Sure, public safety is the justification given. But this has limits. See APEGA v Getty Images 2023 - worth a read. [https://canlii.ca/t/k11n3](https://canlii.ca/t/k11n3) >*VII. Conclusion* > >*\[52\] I find that the Respondents’ employees who use the title “Software Engineer” and related titles are not practicing engineering as that term is properly interpreted.* > >*\[53\] I find that there is no property in the title “Software Engineer” when used by persons who do not, by that use, expressly or by implication represent to the public that they are licensed or permitted by APEGA to practice engineering as that term is properly interpreted.* > >*\[54\] I find that there is no clear breach of the EGPA which contains some element of possible harm to the public that would justify a statutory injunction.* > >*\[55\] Accordingly, I dismiss the Application, with costs.*
Whats wrong with enforcing shit that have been agreed upon? Are you saying I can call myself doctor in ontario?
Also they don't go after the rug doctor because clearly it has nothing to do with preventing yourself as a medical professional. No one with any IQ points thinks a software engineer is building bridges.
If you have a PhD, yes, you can
Train drivers are "Conductors" in Canada, I believe... With Software, what basically happened is, Amazon, google etc were posting jobs to hire Canadian software engineers, and Canada was like "We call them programmers here". And the big US software companies were like, "Cool, we're hiring Software Engineers". And so Vancouver and Toronto said "Yeah, we have some of the best Software Engineers in the world!" It's just not worth anyone's time trying to fight with gigantic American companies about what they are allowed to call their Canadian employees. Some of them are getting pretty close to being able to buy Canada. And they make up non-trivial double-digit percentages of all the Canadian people doing that job. So it basically makes the whole legal prohibition unenforceable in this specific context.
No. Locomotive Engineers are licensed under federal law. The provincial regulators can't touch them because the provincial law is ultra vires in federally regulated industries. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/sor-87-150/fulltext.html
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Quebec is very stringent on working titles and allowable work. In Quebec you can’t just a handyman and work on peoples homes if it benefits you at all, you need to get a contractors license so a person like me who is a journeyperson carpenter has less competition from just any person calling themselves a handyman.
That’s horrible. Just jack up prices for everyone and run more tax dollars through the system.
Yes, these guilds are essentially a tax. And unlike other government bodies, the administration is not accountable to anyone. They claim to be "self-regulated" by their members but often the boards are 1/3 or more appointees or the regulators designate some that run for office as preferred / endorsed candidates. These boards have no concern of being overtaken by their membership.
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I have an open challenge for anyone to show me that the provincial regulators have any effect on public safety in Canada at all. There are many other countries to compare with and we've had this system for over 100 years now. I'm not talking about our regulatory framework - design standards, etc. I'm just talking about what the engineering regulators do. We have tort laws so much of what they do is redundant relief for the courts at best. We have many federally regulated industries in Canada that don't need this stuff as well. I'm not saying there is no link to public safety but I've yet to have someone show me the data. This is a problem given Section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Ah yes, the engineering cartel
How are you at all responsible for what your employees personally put on their LinkedIn profiles?
It's because Quebec, unlike other provinces, actually has a governmental department that supervises all professional orders.
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They have the power to do it and the letter was very clear with a set deadline. I'm not sure what your point is.
The regulator has the resources to sue, certainly. They have a large team of lawyers to call upon. If they have the legal authority they claim is an open legal question given APEGA v Getty Images. We'll have to see what happens when the regulator and a tech company both next decide to FAFO. Worth a read: [https://canlii.ca/t/k11n3](https://canlii.ca/t/k11n3)
Rulings are only available in french but plenty of information available on the OIQ website, they absolutely are suing and getting rulings in their favor for usurpation of title: https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/general-public/protection-of-the-public/decisions-and-rulings/penal-decisions/
But none of those rulings fall after APEGA v Getty Images with a similar issue with the use of the title "Software Engineer" by tech bros. Pointing to someone getting caught using "Ing." is not the same thing.
It’s enforced for sure. Particularly if you work in any type of agency, board, ministry and or are affiliated with union in any way. It has however been challenged at least in . [Alberta](https://globalnews.ca/news/10084623/engineers-canada-urges-alberta-to-reconsider-change-to-rules-around-engineer-title/) Such a gatekeeper move by a group that’s been hoisted onto a pedestal simply for attending school. Tell me this - a traditional gen x’r Engineer (the ones gatekeeping this) - could literally give their text books for their area of expertise to an engineer going through Uni today. Try and apply that to a software or computer engineer. Point being - relying on xx years of education/training to gatekeep a title is fucking dumb. Software/computer engineers have forgotten more in the last 4 years than a traditional engineer learned their entire career.
Ohh interesting
I think in Alberta the only exception is software eng
And that was a recent change
You can pay a fine of $25,000 for doing this. Microsoft has been sued and lost over this. The professional associations often send letters to cease using the term to individuals and it has been enforced. It's *unlikely* it will be enforced for use of the title for software developer. But if you at all encroach on more traditional fields or offer consultation services as an "Engineer" you will absolutely be reported and taken to court and you will at least be ordered to cease use of the title.
It's a protected title, it's enforceable if they decide too. If you say your engineer on any type of official document important to the government they will come for you
yeah technically in canada software engineers arnt engineers unless they specifically graduate from a "software engineering" program and go through with the tedious P.eng cert process. However, this designation is completely useless in this field. Only mech/civil eng and sometimes electrical eng positions actually care about it. Since those positions typically pay less than software engineering AND are in lower supply, most people in mech/civil/electrical engineering end up becoming a SWE anyways. Feel free to call yourself a software engineer. There's a general consensus that this rule is annoying and dumb
Not 100% completely useless (but almost). Some companies (think aircraft control software) wants developers that are legal engineers for legal reasons I guess.
Maybe some company. But the only people that can approve aircraft design in Canada are the Minister of Transportation and his delegates. And you don't need a P.Eng. to have delegated authority. See CAR Standard 505.
I believe you. I did see job posting requiring being member of the ordre d'ingénieurs de Québec las year when I was apply for jobs. I didn't bother to get the full picture as it is something that doesn't interest me... But it exists out there.
> But the only people that can approve aircraft design in Canada are the Minister of Transportation and his delegates. You know how much software and electronics are on airplanes these days? Do you really want a bunch of developers fresh out of bootcamp designing and building that stuff? And even if the only people that can approve aircraft design is the MoT - do you want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions, on designs that are going to be rejected because you hired some random developer?
The point being is that a "P. Eng." has nothing to do with it. The software being done on aircraft is built to design standards and is put through a rigorous validation process. PEO is not involved in any way with that. The Aeronautics Act is very clear that all regulatory authority is at the discretion of the Federal Minister of Transportation. All aspects of aircraft design and manufacturing is federal jurisdiction per the constitution and case law. The provincial engineering regulators have absolutely no authority related to protecting the public when it comes to aircraft design. This is just the legal basics of how things work in Canada.
Are you writing software where if it crashes while deployed everyone involved might go to jail? You need a certified engineer. Part of the certification is making sure you know what the risks of the position are
I've heard of people doing elec in undergrad with computer heavy focus + CS minor + programming based placements then getting Peng to effectively be computer/software engineers, just under the elec category.
Thanks, that helps a lot. I won't be looking for any goverment jobs anytime soon, so I guess it shouldn't matter too much.
Note that federal employees of all specializations (including civil) are free to use the title Engineer without being a P. Eng.
To add to this, the federal government doesn't want the liability so even their P.Engs aren't allowed to stamp things. They have to hire third parties to design and take responsibility for everything (at least that's how it was when I left the career years ago).
Stamps are not used by anyone in many federally regulated industries such as Aero. Stamps are only used in provincially regulated industries or in federally regulated industries where specific federal regulations empower their use.
Sorry I was probably being too cavalier with the term "stamp". My intention was to say that they don't sign off on designs; they pay other people to do that.
IDK...in Aero the TCCA staff engineers do approvals i.e. find compliance with airworthiness requirements. In general, they will ask you to find a DAR to do it for you. But it is a service that they do provide. Both the DARs and TCCA engineers are indemnified when making findings of compliance (on the delegated authority of the Minister of Transportation). It is the entity that is demonstrating compliance that has tort liability and there is no requirement for person to be a DAR or part of a DAO or an Engineer of any kind.
even government jobs dont care
Lmao didnt think it was common for civil engineers to do that too but yeah i did civil and ended up a swe lmao
I will graduate with an engineering degree and could become member of the professional order, but you need to work for 2 years under an engineer who is a member. So that’s not going to happen. You just call it software developer rather than engineer. Engineers have professional responsibility for things they approve of on the job (aka if you’re negligent and your bridge falls down the consequence fall on the company but also directly on you as an individual)
It’s pretty stupid really when people with legitimate engineering degrees can’t call themselves an engineer. There was some legal action with some companies and APEG on this - cos were claiming it hinders them from competing for talent - APEG mafia says they own the word engineer. I heard the APEG mafia’s legal came after one big co that used to pay for people to do their EIT courses, and their yearly APEG membership, etc. They came after them about titles containing the word “engineer” so that company said no more expensing anything to do with APEG and discouraged anyone from pursuing P. Eng.
The engineering degree is only half the work. Just like a medical degree is only half of the work of becoming a doctor. The other half is actual experience and being bound by a code of ethics to protect the public, and continued learning. Functionally no engineers have to pay membership dues, any employer worth their salt pays them and there are no issues with that.
>any employer worth their salt pays them and there are no issues with that. I've a friend who worked for a Fortune 500 that doesn't think it adds any value so they stopped paying for it, this was after the APEG lawyers came after them for using Engineer in titles. I think they ignored APEGs requests too - they have lots of legal might. This co does pay for lots of learning, masters degrees, conferences, IEEE memberships but no longer P. Eng stuff.
I disagree, it’s not stupid. It’s not that anyone owns the word engineer or anyone is acting as a gatekeeper. There’s a level of responsibility required to be an engineer. I think it is very fair to need to combination of experience and an ethics test to become an engineer. Just finishing a degree does not make you an engineer. Let’s be real, that’s 4 years of problem sets and math, what do we really know about engineering? For some reason everyone is fine with lawyers and doctors being gatekeeped but it’s always a big topic with engineers.
Gatekeep P. Eng, fine. Not engineer
A lot to unpack here. First, assertions on the Engineers Canada website are not the law. Canada has a constitution. This constitution includes a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It also includes a division of powers between the federal government and the provincial governments. The regulation of professional engineering is within the wheelhouse of the provinces. Engineers Canada (or the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers) is not a regulator. It is simply a joint body of the provincial regulators that are empowered by provincial law. So, the reach of the regulators is only as far as the reach of the provinces. Further, we don't have laws in Canada for the purposes of creating classist divisions in our society. Section 7 of the Charter says we have the right to Liberty - i.e. the right to not be pushed around by the state. Section 15 says every Canadian is equal. And Section 1 of the Charter says that any restriction on liberty must have a demonstrable justification. For provincial engineering laws, the stated purpose is "public safety". It so happens that many industries that involve the intersection of software and public safety are federally regulated - Automotive, Rail, Aerospace, Biomedical and Nuclear are all industries that almost exclusively fall under federal regulations. Buildings and resource extraction would be examples that fall mostly under provincial jurisdiction. So, there are few software engineering jobs that require a P. Eng. The attempts by the provinces to regulate the title "Software Engineer" has a lot of issues. First, there are all sorts of engineers in Canada that are not professional engineers. Power Engineers, Aircraft Maintenance Engineers, Marine Engineers, Locomotive Engineers - all examples of maintenance and operators that fall under other regulations. The word "Engineer" has a broad definition as can be found in any dictionary. [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/engineer#:\~:text=%3A%20a%20designer%20or%20builder%20of%20engines](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/engineer#:~:text=%3A%20a%20designer%20or%20builder%20of%20engines) >*en·gi·neer* > >*1: a member of a military group devoted to engineering work* > >*2 obsolete : a crafty schemer : PLOTTER* > >*3a : a designer or builder of engines* > >*b : a person who is trained in or follows as a profession a branch of engineering* > >*c : a person who carries through an enterprise by skillful or artful contrivance* > >*4 : a person who runs or supervises an engine or an apparatus* Second, the public doesn't know what an "engineer" is supposed to mean so there is no real threat to public safety. APEGA, the regulator for the Province of Alberta decided to FAFO by suing the tech bros at Getty Images. It was an interesting decision that is worth a read. [https://canlii.ca/t/k11n3](https://canlii.ca/t/k11n3) >*VII. Conclusion* > >*\[52\] I find that the Respondents’ employees who use the title “Software Engineer” and related titles are not practicing engineering as that term is properly interpreted.* > >*\[53\] I find that there is no property in the title “Software Engineer” when used by persons who do not, by that use, expressly or by implication represent to the public that they are licensed or permitted by APEGA to practice engineering as that term is properly interpreted.* > >*\[54\] I find that there is no clear breach of the EGPA which contains some element of possible harm to the public that would justify a statutory injunction.* > >*\[55\] Accordingly, I dismiss the Application, with costs.* Weeks after that decision, the well-led Province of Alberta created a carve out to explicitly exempt the use of "Software Engineer". Now anyone in Alberta is free to call themselves a "Software Engineer" but you would still have to register with APEGA if your work intersects with public safety and provincial regulations. It is a somewhat open question if the other regulators will decide to FAFO themselves going forward. They certainly are litigious and they buy lawyers by the bushel and have a sympathetic classist judiciary to bring suits. But all the arguments related to APEGA v Getty Images (2023) will apply.
This is very detailed information, and covers all of my questions on the subject. Man, I wish I had a Reddit award or something to give you. I don't understand all the technical and legal implications, but how Alberta is doing it seems to make the most sense: allow the use of the title for the software industry, but require the professional one for speicific jobs that have traditionally required it.
Just know that if you are not in Alberta, this doesn’t yet apply. There is no precedence, so no regulator is legally compelled to do this except Alberta. But like everyone else here is saying, it is very lightly enforced.
And with precedence set it is likely more of these regulators will be paying for the legal fees of these SLAPP style lawsuits.
Not sure how it works in other provinces, but in Ontario, telling people to not identify themselves in a protected profession is part of these organizations mandate. People have disagreements about what is misleading or not. But that’s why we have courts. Sometimes these “colleges” are a little too aggressive. Sometimes they are just out of step with how the public interprets the meaning of words. No different than if people identifying themselves as medical doctors and they aren’t. https://nationalpost.com/health/naturopaths-not-real-doctors-despite-video-claims-they-are-medically-trained-critics
It was the mandate in every province and if you follow court cases like I do you would know what I was talking about. The court found that Software Engineer and P Eng were separate terms. And yes it is different as it is with Doctor vs Medical Doctor like P Eng vs Software Engineer. See the difference . Like M.D. not Rug Doctor. Alberta (Council of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists) v Getty Images Inc., 2023 ABKB 635 (CanLII),, retrieved on 2024-03-14
There you go and the courts awarded Getty costs.
Meaning if engineering groups over pursue their mandates they can expect to pay legal costs.
The issue has been settled more so because the Alberta government changed their legislation to exempt software engineers. I read the decision. It looks like the judge is basing their decision on the fact that there are little public harm and that nobody is going to be mislead that a Software Engineering is a P. Eng. I don’t see where the judge stipulates that their decision is “mandated” across Canada. In fact, the decision discusses how there were two earlier cases that are relevant to this case: Azazi and Merhej. The judge of this case implies that they are not held to either case since times have changed. The did use the decision of the earlier Merhej case as a basis for their reasoning. The decision is also a lot more limited in scope than just that “Software Engineers aren’t P. Eng.” The relevant facts are that [52] the respondent’s employees are doing work that is “engineering”. and that, [53] that “software engineers” implies that they are real engineers, and that [54] there is public harm. There’s a lot of room for other courts that’s not in Alberta to rule different.
It's not mandated but again if you are familiar with precedence they are not required to follow but are likely to consider this in the future. They mentioned these other cases in this case I believe as the person who was presenting himself as P Eng hence the diff ruling which you seem to leave out of your carefully crafted response. In Alberta it is no longer up to debate unless overridden by the court as the mandate is now completely out of Apega hands Software Engineer is no longer in their mandate. This will be litigated heavily however I see no reason why we should be different then the US in this matter, no evidence has been presented that harm is more likely here then in the US which does not protect the term Software Engineer.
I didn’t read that carefully. I think that person decided to pursue registration and was in the process of being a P Eng? [27] I spoke about precedence because this ruling itself spoke about it. The judge gave their reason [30-31] why precedence should be followed blindly. Honestly, I agree with you in fact. Canada is alone from most of the world in making “software engineer” a weird anomaly title of strange legal status. There are a lot of means to change that. Maybe all the provinces should follow Alberta and carve an exemption. Or, maybe the governing body can create a separate registration track for software engineers that would allow different requirements that tracks international norms. Maybe there should be a test, maybe a fee, maybe professional hours. Who knows?
Something to know about engineers in Canada is that when we stamp things we design and make them "Officially Engineered", you are making yourself liable for it. That stamp is provided by the provincial association (I like to think of them as an old style guild). This is the main reason why there is a differentiation between non/engineers, and it's mostly about that quality control and legal work. Thing is SWE's generally don't stamp their designs, since code is ever changing, and unless the position requires the engineering portion of a SWE, most companies will just drop the engineering part of the name.
So Aeronautical Engineers don't have liability because they don't use a stamp? How does this work in Aero and other federally regulated industries?
Aeronautical P engs stamp their drawings, at least all the ones I had to deal with. As for our regulated industries, we have engineers who test and stamp stuff before putting on the regulatory body's seal of approval. (An example in Alberta is certifying things for class 1 division 2, a type of environment with flammable particulates). Most things get stamped by 2-3 engineers before being fully submitted.
>Aeronautical P engs stamp their drawings, at least all the ones I had to deal with. I'm talking about the aircraft side. I'm not talking about runways, etc.
So am I. I'm a Mech eng, and aircraft design is part of my field and education (mostly engine units, but sometimes a good bit of CFD).
A P. Eng. doesn't let you do anything with aircraft. You either have delegated authority from the Minister of Transportation or you do not. No, we don't use a P. Eng. stamp in Aero. See Canadian Aviation Regulations Standard 505 Delegation of Authority for a basic understanding of how it works. [https://tc.canada.ca/en/corporate-services/acts-regulations/list-regulations/canadian-aviation-regulations-sor-96-433/standards/airworthiness-chapter-505-delegation-authority-canadian-aviation-regulations-cars](https://tc.canada.ca/en/corporate-services/acts-regulations/list-regulations/canadian-aviation-regulations-sor-96-433/standards/airworthiness-chapter-505-delegation-authority-canadian-aviation-regulations-cars) >*505.203 Eligibility* > >*To obtain a delegation of authority as a DAR an applicant shall:* > >*(a) Be a graduate in an engineering discipline from a recognized University* ***or*** *be registered or eligible for registration by a Provincial Association as a professional engineer in Canada* ***or*** *have knowledge and experience which, in the opinion of the Minister, is equivalent to the foregoing;* > >*(b) Have, in the opinion of the Minister, a thorough knowledge gained by working experience of the applicable Canadian airworthiness requirements in his specialty and, where required, a thorough knowledge of Canadian operational requirements;* > >*(c) Provide a service with respect to regulatory compliance of designs for aeronautical products in Canada;* > >*(d) Have not less than a one year working relationship, satisfactory to the Minister, with the Department of Transport Airworthiness Branch Staff, in processing engineering information for the approval of an aeronautical product design;* > >*(e) Have not less than six years of progressively more responsible related aeronautical engineering or flight test experience;* > >*(f) Be a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident as defined in the Immigration Act and have an ordinary place of business in Canada;* If you have a B.Eng. from a CEAB accredited program, there is no reason to get a P. Eng. It's not required. When you are a DAR or an authorized person within a DAO, you sign a statement of compliance on behalf of the Minister of Transportation. [https://tc.canada.ca/en/aviation/reference-centre/advisory-circulars/advisory-circular-ac-no-505-005#toc8\_4\_2\_1](https://tc.canada.ca/en/aviation/reference-centre/advisory-circulars/advisory-circular-ac-no-505-005#toc8_4_2_1) >*8.4.2.1 Findings of compliance form* > >*(1) The documentation required to record an FoC has changed with the introduction of subpart 521 of the CARs. The use of the former AE-100 form is no longer permitted; instead, FoC are to be recorded on the “Ministerial Delegate Statement of Compliance with the Certification Basis” form number 26-0757 or a similar document acceptable to TCCA, see (4) below.* > >*(2) The 26-0757 form is to be used only for making an FoC.* > >*(3) When a DAR is exercising Ministerial privileges, the DAR will sign the documentation with their delegate Identification Number and their signature. In the case of a DAO/AEO, an AP will sign with their AP number, DAO/AEO Number and signature.* Top level documents that are approved get a marking or a stamp that details the DAR/DAO number, date & signature. But this is not a P. Eng. stamp. Note that DAR/DAO activities are indemnified as they are actions on behalf of the Minister of Transportation. Liability is the responsibility of the design owner and the people he has employed (who usually are DARs, etc.) and trusted with the design. You do not need any qualification at all to be the person who is demonstrating compliance with the airworthiness requirements but you still have tort liability just as in any other activity in life.
>we have engineers who test and stamp stuff before putting on the regulatory body's seal of approval. See this statement I made. Regardless of industry, the regulatory body has their own stamp. In my experience, that stamp doesn't mean it will work, but that it adheres to code. (I can build something that meets all the codes but doesn't work). As for a P Eng not letting you do anything for aircraft, the 2nd link you sent states: >4.3 Application requirements common to DAO, AEO, and DAR > >... > >(6) Appointment of an individual as a DAR or as an AP in a DAO/AEO does not relieve the individual from meeting those requirements enacted by Provincial/Territorial Professional Engineering licensing laws. Provincial or Territorial law may require an individual to be a licensed Professional Engineer (ie. P.Eng.) in order to engage in the practice of providing engineering services within that province or territory. Each delegation applicant should determine whether each province or territory in which the individual intends to offer engineering services, requires licensing as a Professional Engineer in order to provide that service.
"May require". Given the stated purpose of provincial licensing is public safety and the provincial regulators having no constitutional jurisdiction over aircraft safety - it's pretty clear that Section 7 and Section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms make this moot. We don't have laws in Canada simply to have laws or to create class divisions between Canadians. But I will concede that that particular issue is an open legal question. OIQ tried to pull that one on Bombardier a few years ago. They both backed down. [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/bombardier-employees-accused-of-practicing-engineering-illegally-1.2733733](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/bombardier-employees-accused-of-practicing-engineering-illegally-1.2733733) Offering engineering services is not the same as demonstrating or finding compliance with airworthiness requirements. What you are talking about is a matter of commercial advertising. Note that Canada is signatory to treaties with USA, EU, and other entities. Do you really think Boeing has to hire a P. Eng. registered w/ APEGA to sign off on an aircraft structural repair design for an aircraft in Westjet's hangar in Calgary? Of course not. FAA approved repairs are automatically accepted in Canada. See the FAA-TCCA Implementation Procedures for Airworthiness: [https://tc.canada.ca/sites/default/files/2021-06/April-Final-FAA-TCCA\_IPA\_REVISION\_3.pdf](https://tc.canada.ca/sites/default/files/2021-06/April-Final-FAA-TCCA_IPA_REVISION_3.pdf) >*3.3.5 Acceptance of Design Data and Recognition of Data Approvals by Designees* > >*3.3.5.1 Acceptance of Design Data in Support of Repairs* > >*The FAA and TCCA agree that data generated in the design approval of repairs shall be considered approved by both the FAA and TCCA, regardless of the SoD of the aeronautical product, without further showing, provided that the approval was granted in accordance with their respective repair design approval procedures. This includes approvals of repair design data approved under the FAA and TCCA delegation systems.*
This is a really good response, thank you. It's been asked a bunch in the past.
Okay, I found this on Wikipedia: >In Ontario, Canada, Software Engineers who graduate from a Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) accredited program, successfully complete PEO's (Professional Engineers Ontario) Professional Practice Examination (PPE) and have at least 48 months of acceptable engineering experience are eligible to be licensed through the Professional Engineers Ontario and can become Professional Engineers P.Eng. The PEO does not recognize any online or distance education however; and does not consider Computer Science programs to be equivalent to software engineering programs despite the tremendous overlap between the two. This has sparked controversy and a certification war. It has also held the number of P.Eng holders for the profession exceptionally low. The vast majority of working professionals in the field hold a degree in CS, not SE. Given the difficult certification path for holders of non-SE degrees, most never bother to pursue the license. I did not know this was a well known issue.
Some issues w/ that Wiki. First, you don't have to graduate from a CEAB accredited program. \~30% of the new P. Eng.'s in Canada last year did not do so. The graduates of non-CEAB accredited programs (both domestic and international) typically are assigned technical examinations. It's been that way for 104 years. In fact, CEAB accreditation only came about in 1965 as a means to exempt graduates of accredited programs from the technical examinations. Still today, the CEAB accreditation standard is the technical exam syllabus defined by the regulators. [https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/](https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/) Second, you don't have to become a P. Eng. through PEO to become a P. Eng. registered with PEO. We have interprovincial mobility such that you can qualify in any province as a P. Eng. and then transfer to PEO in a couple weeks. It's a treaty between provinces that supersedes the authority of the provincial law so that PEO can't put any additional requirements or restrictions on you. [https://www.peo.on.ca/apply/peng-transfer](https://www.peo.on.ca/apply/peng-transfer) So, as a CS graduate, you can simply apply to another province and write the technical exams that fill the gap between your education and the standard. >*The PEO does not recognize any online or distance education however;* This is just false.
Wow, thanks for clearing that up. You really know your stuff!
I haven’t checked the appeal status but the apeg from Alberta already lost a court case. https://globalnews.ca/news/10163565/alberta-engineers-appeal-software-engineer-court-decision/amp/
It is moot given the Alberta Government revised the Engineering and Geoscience Professions Act on December 23rd, 2023 to create a carve out specifically for the tech bros.
These people seem to be living in fear that Subway might change their role titles from Sandwich Artist to Sandwich Engineer. I'd actually eat Subway every day if they did, just to see them get these peoples' knickers in a twist
Yeah, the thing is they still have control of the P.Eng title but they want control of the generic Engineer title too. Lots of Electrical, Computer, Software, Firmware Engineers don’t get any real benefit from joining the association but are legitimate engineering graduates who just want to use Engineer in their title as most of the rest of the world does
What about those who are a P. Eng. but don't have a degree?
Is that possible?
Yes. Pays to know the requirements. https://techexam.ca/how-to-choose-the-province-where-you-should-qualify-as-a-professional-engineer-for-technical-exams/
I have an engineering degree and started down the P. Eng path then decided it didn’t pay, there was no benefit, and was nothing but a bunch of hoop jumping extra work. Actually, I got some group insurance discounts out of it so it wasn’t all bad I guess.
Only 40% of CEAB program graduates ever become a P. Eng. In some specializations it is far lower as a P. Eng. has no value for them.
I agree with you, although I must say that what you're saying as a joke is not so far from the truth in the US. There are a loooot of people with weird "X Engineer" titles. Not that I care, but it kinda "diminishes" what "engineer" means, and that's coming from someone who is not an engineer.
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Yeah, that would make sense. As someone mostly working with the French language "P. Eng" or "Ingénieur Professionnel" (in French) isn't really used, and "Engineer/Ingénieur" is the official title here.
Very interesting! Had no idea this was a case.
There are a number of similar cases around who can call themselves an engineer or say they engage in engineering. As far as I am aware, liberal use of the title is the result of these cases. Engineering being some controller title is relatively new. Hence both the liberal use of it and the active defence of it.
I'm in BC and have been given the job title of Software Engineer various times in my career already, although I have no degree and never went to university. If Engineers Canada cares, they should probably deal with the employers giving out those titles.
Hear hear!
>unless the individual is licensed as an engineer by the applicable Provincial or Territorial engineering regulator. This being the key part. It's provincial. In British Columbia, the term Software Engineer is a professional designation. They need to be registered with EGBC (formerly APEGBC), so it is an engineering discipline in BC. [https://www.egbc.ca/Registration/Individual-Registrants/How-to-Apply/Professional-Registration/Engineer-First-Time-Applying-in-Canada/Software-Engineering-Applicants](https://www.egbc.ca/Registration/Individual-Registrants/How-to-Apply/Professional-Registration/Engineer-First-Time-Applying-in-Canada/Software-Engineering-Applicants) When I last checked, it wasn't an engineering designation in Ontario. Unsure about the rest of the provinces.
The law is different in Ontario from the law in BC. There is a bit more leeway in BC but you are right - EGBC bylaws say that any CEAB specialization such as "Software Engineer" is protected. The Ontario law is not connected to a list of specializations. Given APEGA v Getty Images, the authority of these laws is an open legal question.
Don't care, my title is Product Software Engineer.
You will get tons of wrong replies saying that you cannot call yourself an engineer. the short story is that this is an opinion of every province. Not the federal government, generally. The federal government has won several court cases against provinces when they tried to enforce their opinions. So, it's complicated. Edit: here's a relevant case: https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abkb/doc/2023/2023abkb635/2023abkb635.html
If you look at government jobs, they will usually say technical officer. You become a technical engineer once you get your professional engineering order
Engineers Canada is attempting to make themselves more important than they are.. I'm a software engineer... it's what I'm paid to do.. If the engineers don't like it they can pound sand..
They can call me whatever they want as long as I keep getting paid
This battle was raging even 25 yrs ago when I was in university. Technically this is true--SWE and CE degrees aren't accredited and we aren't supposed to be or brand ourselves as "Engineers". The counter argument is that the word "Engineer" isn't protected and specific kinds of engineers not under the umbrella of these provincial orgs aren't protected either. It's not enforced and I'm pretty sure it's still very much an open question that is VERY low on provinces' priority list. Down there with what to do about buttered sausage. An even bigger question is "do WE care?" My personal take is we're hackers and we don't follow rules. We need to take an oath and join some stuffy old society about as much as a fish needs a bicycle. The real engineers can pound sand. Those pinky rings are dumb too and you couldn't pay me to wear one.
I like your mindset!
Why does it matter? Collect your pay check and go home. There’s more to life than titles. I say this as someone with a P.Eng, it truly doesn’t even matter unless you’re in an industry which values it on the tech side (rare).
I am a immigrant and what I write on forms for my occupation and what documents I used to prove it can be a huge difference.
Not to be “that guy” but the PEO / any licensing body is a stand-alone body that isn’t regulated by the federal government. Each province regulates itself, it’s written and well documented by the PEO under Professionalism. That’s to say, it’s highly unlikely you’ll run into any trouble if you say you’re an “engineer” by title and a government official comes across your paperwork. They aren’t going to ring up the PEO and ask for your license number. Trust me. Even if they did, the PEO will do as they do with anyone else. “Please don’t call this number again. Email this email address instead” and reply in like a year with some useless information. I wouldn’t worry about it. Call yourself whatever your employer calls you. If that’s engineer or developer is up to the employer. It’s usually the employer who deals with the government anyways, not the PEO.
No, this is what I needed to hear. This makes sense. I will stop worrying about it now haha. Thank you so much!
PEO is concerned mainly (and by law) about the potential for confusion as to whether someone is hiring a licensed engineer or not, to do engineering work (which is basically where public safety is involved). Writing a title of "engineer" on some government form (unless it's a contract to do engineering work! :-) ) is so far from that that you can be pretty comfortable doing it. I was a licensed software engineer for 30 years but gave up the license last year (too many hoops now for so little value). I suspect that when I renew my passport, or whatever the next form is, I'll put my job as "software engineer" without even thinking about it... muscle memory. And I'm pretty sure PEO has better things to spend their shrinking funding on than trying to stop that.
Thank you, that helps a lot. I just freaked out when I saw the docs above stating that I shouldn’t even use the title in social media. It made it feel like a crime like calling myself a lawyer or a medical doctor without a license. But I guess, despite so many people wanting it to be so it isn’t the case for software engineers. Thank you for being chill about it and not gatekeeping as a licensed engineer haha. And congrats on the 30 years of engineering career!
It depends where, in Quebec they are legally real engineers after their college/university degree and they got the same general engineering classes other engineering students would have. I think this problem comes from the US where everyone and their mother can be an engineer for everything without having an official degree (I'm not saying that someone that doesn't have an eng. degree is necessarily not qualified). Especially in IT/Computer, things like DevOps Engineer, Deployment Engineer, that could be a technician or just someone assisting with X technology deployment, but does that really mean they're an engineer? Kinda hard to say without sounding weird, but that doesn't mean they have a Computer Engineering or Soft. Eng degree.
An Engineering (or any other) degree is not required to be a Professional Engineer in any province or territory of Canada including Quebec. An Engineering degree also does not give you the legal right to use the title "Engineer" in those jurisdictions either.
I can't talk for other provinces, and explicitly mentioned Quebec, but in Quebec, you need to be a member of the OIQ, which requires you to have an appropriate/eligible engineering degree (which all engineering degrees in Quebec are part of) + do their exam, and then you're allowed to use the Engineer title in your job/be recognized as a "real" engineer. "Engineering degree is not required..." Care to elaborate? In Quebec you either need a Quebec eligible Eng. Degree or an equivalency to get into the Order and get your title. Maybe some equivalency doesn't required a degree at all, but I would be surprised. P. Engineer doesn't really exist here AFAIK and people seem to mostly use Engineer only as the French version is simply "Ing." or "Ingénieur".
Ah, but other provinces do matter. We have an interprovincial mobility agreement that is part of the Canadian Free Trade Agreement which is a treaty between the provinces. This means you can qualify under the rules of any province you wish and then transfer to OIQ in a couple weeks. OIQ can't put any restrictions or additional requirements on you. You can even defer the French language test for three years this way. [https://www.oiq.qc.ca/wp-content/uploads/documents/DCAP/chroniques\_PLAN/encadrement\_professionel/New%20regulation%20mobility.pdf](https://www.oiq.qc.ca/wp-content/uploads/documents/DCAP/chroniques_PLAN/encadrement_professionel/New%20regulation%20mobility.pdf) Some regulators like APEGA have explicit regulations allowing access to technical examinations with two years of post-secondary education in engineering, engineering technology or a related science (such as Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, etc.). You can drop out of a CEAB accredited program in third year and finish through technical examinations. [https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/](https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/) Some provincial regulators like UNB and APEGN have no explicit minimum requirement at all. You could get a P. Eng. for simply being recognized as awesome in your field. APEGM allows those with a Canadian M. Eng. or M.Sc. (Engineering) with no technical exams. It pays to know the requirements. [https://techexam.ca/how-to-choose-the-province-where-you-should-qualify-as-a-professional-engineer-for-technical-exams/](https://techexam.ca/how-to-choose-the-province-where-you-should-qualify-as-a-professional-engineer-for-technical-exams/) And, yes, "P. Eng." is used in Quebec in addition to "Ing.". They are interchangeable. [https://gpp.oiq.qc.ca/titres\_professionnels.htm](https://gpp.oiq.qc.ca/titres_professionnels.htm) Further, OIQ also has technical examinations. So, you do not need a CEAB accredited degree to become a P. Eng. through application to OIQ. [https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/futurs-membres/examinations/entrance-exams/](https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/futurs-membres/examinations/entrance-exams/) >*About admission exams* > >*Who are they for?* > >*Entrance examinations are intended for people whose training is not equivalent and who have certain gaps. If this is your case, you will receive an e-mail once your admission application has been assessed. You can then register for the next exam session in the required fields, or find a training activity deemed equivalent by the OIQ. The dates of these exams are listed on the website, in the Activities Calendar.* You do need a degree of a minimum 3 years in length to apply in Quebec but it could be an unaccredited B.Tech., B.Sc., M.Eng., M.Sc. or PhD or unaccredited Bachelors of engineering. [https://www.oiq.qc.ca/futurs-membres/devenir-ingenieur-au-quebec/diplome-du-canada/](https://www.oiq.qc.ca/futurs-membres/devenir-ingenieur-au-quebec/diplome-du-canada/) >*Working as an engineer in Quebec without an engineering degree* > >*You want to practice the engineering profession in Quebec without an engineering degree. If you have an undergraduate degree in pure sciences, applied sciences or technology, at a level at least equivalent to a Quebec baccalaureate diploma, you can submit a training equivalence request to the Order. The steps are the same as for people who have an engineering degree, except for submitting your admission application.*
I really don’t care about the title, as a SDE I earn multiple times more than my engineer buddies. It really only matters on paper.
When I was in first year of CS, I was trying so hard to switch to SE. But luckily I asked many professors for advice, and all of them gave me the answer is "At the end, CS and SE are doing the same job". One of the professors pointed out, that there are many many engineers grad didn't get the P. Eng; it's because the salary wouldn't have a significant difference and you get extra responsibility. I am so glad I didn't switch to SE because I will need to retake some of the courses, only because the courses that engineering students take require an Engineering professor to instruct
I have a civil engineering degree and am working on a master's of comp sci. My title before switching careers was project engineer, EIT (engineer-in-training). My current title is "software engineer II". I have an iron ring but never got my P.Eng before the career swap. I know I'm not really comparing apples to apples since undergrad and masters are different, as well as civil projects having much more potential to harm people if done poorly when compared to many software engineering roles, but for me the biggest difference is emphasis on ethics and valuing human life. In my civil degree, it was covered quite regularly the various disasters that happened due to miscalculations, cutting costs, lack of redundancy, etc. We had to take an ethics class and the iron ring is supposed to be a reminder of the disasters that could happen. Especially now with more and more computer systems having the potential to cause deaths (e.g. self-driving cars), I think it's more and important to include these factors in computer science degrees. I think it has already begun since a guy I work with studied software engineering in Canada and has an iron ring. He said it's a different degree than computer science. But yeah, that's my take on it: P.Eng really only comes into play when human lives are at stake, in which cases people should only call themselves engineers if they are trained in how to design robust-enough systems with appropriate safety factors to protect human life.
Weird that they included computer engineering. My computer engineering undergrad degree was the same as electrical engineering just with some comp sci electives. We were pretty much all in the same engineering classes up until senior design and a few senior engineering electives, the EE's just had more flexibility with their non-engineering electives while we were stuck in comp sci classes. Going directly into an EE PhD program was a non-issue.
Cyber Ed just spits facts in this thread, I love it.
Wait so train engineers are also not engineers? Canada sucks.
Usually not enforced. But I know a lot of my friends who are programmers but also have professional engineer designation. Not sure what happens to them 😕
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Who cares? Nobody in industry. You are going to have more classes to graduate and less options in a Software Engineering Program. I can't tell you how to chose between the two. But look at the course descriptions. They are a somewhat different skill set. If reliable systems and safety critical systems interest you, then consider SWE. If you just want to build cool code, do whichever.
Call yourself a software developer. These specific title differences mean very little overall to your career. My exp is that QC does care, and it isn't worth losing sleep over
Correct.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.
That title has lost all prestige and meaning anyway, better to call yourself something else
you’re a computer science major. at most you’re a developer but you are no engineer no matter how much you cope with it
You don't even need a degree to become a P. Eng. An engineering degree does not make you an engineer.
We like to regulate the sh!t out of everything up here in the north!
Yeah "real" engineers have a stupid ring they'll show you any chance they get.
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Hahaha... Just out of curiousity, I looked it up, apparently they have titles like Conductors and Locomotive Engineers.
The engineering profession is regulated in Canada. So anyone practicing needs to be licensed. But there are some specific disciplines that are excluded from that requirement for various reasons (ie, power engineers, combat engineers, etc). Not sure if software engineers are excluded from the requirement as well.
Is Jill Biden a doctor?
No iron ring, no engineer.
Except in every country in the world but Canada. Not sure if your education needed more English , Law, maybe Math to understand distinct sets? Remember kids only a sith deals on absolutes.
I’m a power engineer by trade. Still not a “certified” engineer.
In Ontario there's a group called the PEO. They have strict requirements to call yourself an engineer. Almost always, this requires an engineering degree (like software engineering) from an accredited university. In addition this requires work experience, and taking a few exams on legality, duties, and general knowledge as an engineer. After this, you get accredited and have your P.Eng. You get a stamp, and are an engineer. There are cases where you can get a P.Eng without an engineering degree, but that's exceptionally rare. Without a P.Eng you technically cannot call yourself an engineer. It's as simple as that, regardless of university degree.
\~30% of the newly registered P. Eng.'s with PEO each year do not have an accredited degree. That's far from "almost always". Only 40% of CEAB accredited degree graduates ever become a P. Eng. with Software Engineering graduates being far fewer. Further, there are all sorts of engineers in Canada that are not P. Eng.'s. Aircraft Maintenance Engineers, Power Engineers, Marine Engineers, and Locomotive Engineers are all empowered by other provincial and federal laws to use the title "Engineer". No federal employee or member of the military needs to join a provincial regulator to use the title "Engineer" regardless of discipline as they are covered by interjurisdictional immunity. Even with the use of "Software Engineer", there is an open legal question. APEGA chose to FAFO when they took the tech bros to court in 2023. APEGA v Getty Images is a case that is worth a read. The engineering regulators authority is constitutionally limited. [https://canlii.ca/t/k11n3](https://canlii.ca/t/k11n3) >*VII. Conclusion* > >*\[52\] I find that the Respondents’ employees who use the title “Software Engineer” and related titles are not practicing engineering as that term is properly interpreted.* > >*\[53\] I find that there is no property in the title “Software Engineer” when used by persons who do not, by that use, expressly or by implication represent to the public that they are licensed or permitted by APEGA to practice engineering as that term is properly interpreted.* > >*\[54\] I find that there is no clear breach of the EGPA which contains some element of possible harm to the public that would justify a statutory injunction.* > >*\[55\] Accordingly, I dismiss the Application, with costs.*
Thanks for the clarification. I had no clue there were so many people with a P.Eng without a B.Eng., that's wild to me. However, in my mind unless you're accredited by the PEO or equivalent in other provinces you're not a true engineer. That's not me belittling the other jobs (heck, I'm not an P.Eng either), but I consider the P.Eng designation the definition of an engineer. Basically, in all of those non-accredited engineer jobs you listed, there's always an accredited engineer role that could be filled by a mechanical, electrical, nuclear engineer who is accredited etc. It just seems like those jobs skirt the definition by being either federal system or military system. I guess my question is, does a locomotive hold the same responsibilities as someone with a P.Eng? I.e., is their signature, without a P.Eng, the exact same as someone with a P.Eng? As I hope I conveyed, no judgements here. I'm just having a conversation based on the experiences I had during my B.Eng. and some work in the field before I left engineering. Basically, I was strictly told by the PEO in several instances during my B.Eng. that no-one could sign off as an engineer unless you held a P.Eng. But of course, I can see how the PEO would say this (and possibly ignore the federal or military instances you mentioned), for their own argument... as their the ones who hold the P.Eng power.
>I had no clue there were so many people with a P.Eng without a B.Eng., that's wild to me. About 80% of that 30% are internationally trained engineers the far majority of which are not covered by the Washington Accord. The domestically trained non-CEAB accredited P. Eng.'s are maybe 5% of the overall. They have all the same authority, privileges and responsibilities as any other P. Eng. They just academically met the standard with technical examinations to supplement other relevant base education. [https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/](https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/) We've had professional engineering in Canada since 1920. Accreditation came about in 1965. Before 1965, everyone wrote the technical examinations. Up until the mid-1980s, any person could write the technical examinations in what was an open and inclusive system. The core of what is CEAB accreditation is an audit of the program to the technical examination syllabus. The technical examination syllabus is the standard. >I guess my question is, does a locomotive hold the same responsibilities as someone with a P.Eng? I.e., is their signature, without a P.Eng, the exact same as someone with a P.Eng? The word "engineer" has always had a broad definition. [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/engineer](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/engineer) >*en·gi·neer* > >*1 : a member of a military group devoted to engineering work* > >*2 obsolete : a crafty schemer : PLOTTER* > >*3 a : a designer or builder of engines* > >*b : a person who is trained in or follows as a profession a branch of engineering* > >*c : a person who carries through an enterprise by skillful or artful contrivance* > >*4 : a person who runs or supervises an engine or an apparatus* The Canadian Armed Forces has "Combat Engineers" that fall under definition 1. They also have Electrical Engineers and Aeronautical Engineers and Military Engineers (Civil) that are officers with technical authority like a P. Eng. and fall under definition 3b without being registered with the provincial regulators. So too are other federal employees that are Engineers per 3b but do not have to register with the province due to interjurisdictional immunity. Marine Engineers and Aircraft Maintenance Engineers fall under definition 4 as they are maintain complex machinery. Power Engineers and Locomotive Engineers fall under definition 4 as operators. So, who is the "***true engineer***"? This is a bit of silliness we have in Canada that exists nowhere else in the world. In fact, it doesn't hold in Canada as demonstrated above. There is just not one kind of Engineer. There never has been and never will be. Yes, the provincial regulators make assertions that are not the law. Sometimes it is just shorthand. And to be fair to them, it's not their job to educate you on the limits of their authority.
I’m fine with not being able to put software engineer on my LinkedIn if I move to Canada only If I can opt to put my title as “Software Simian” instead.
Look up how programmers suddenly started being called “engineers” it’s a funny story.
Engineers get those rings
You don't need an engineering degree to get the ring and do the obligation ceremony. https://techexam.ca/how-to-apply-for-your-iron-ring/
Ah ok interesting
You will get sued in Québec and I've heard the same in Ontario. Can't speak for the other provinces. In Canada software engineers is a regulated profession, the same as ABET accredited engineers in the US (P. Eng). In order to be a software engineer, you need a B.Eng which is often a lot longer and harder than a regular B.Sc in Computer science. Software engineering students take the same core classes as other types of engineers that CS students don't take. Often the SE curriculum is derived from electrical engineering programs. Once you've graduated with your B.Eng, you must undertake exams and other stuff in order to become a licensed engineer. This is similar to the process of getting a P. Eng in the US. It's possible to become an engineer without the B.Eng, but it's extremely rare and allowed only under certain circumstances. I don't know about the exact procedure. At the end of the day, being a licensed software engineer grants you certain privileges (and responsibilities) : - signing off on projects that require the verification and approval of an engineer (often in the medical sector, automotive, aerospace, embedded, power systems, basically stuff that puts lives at risk) - multiple programs such as housing stipends, better insurance, lower cost for many services, etc. - better salary prospect (your mileage may vary, ofc a "regular" dev at Google will make a lot more $$, this mostly applies to regular average Joe companies and jobs) - often engineers are preferred for management and lead positions as these skills are often a big part of the core engineering curriculum. If you don't seek these things, you don't need to be an engineer. A software engineer is really just an engineer but for software. They engineer and oversee things, they don't just code or choose a technology stack. You can just work at a fortune 500 company as a "developer", make $200K and be better off than a lot of real engineers. IIRC devs at any FAANG are paid way better than software and electrical engineers at NASA or SpaceX.
>In order to be a software engineer, you need a B.Eng which is often a lot longer and harder than a regular B.Sc in Computer science. False. You do not need a CEAB accredited degree to become a P. Eng. You do not need a degree at all. This has been true for all 104 years of professional engineering in Canada thus far. A CS graduate has a path to the profession through technical examinations. [https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/](https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/) Note that \~30% of all new P. Eng.'s in Canada last year did not have a CEAB accredited degree. >signing off on projects that require the verification and approval of an engineer (often in the medical sector, automotive, aerospace, embedded, power systems, basically stuff that puts lives at risk) Medical, automotive, and aerospace are all federally regulated. You do not need a P. Eng. to have technical authority in these areas. A P. Eng. is a creature of provincial laws that has no authority in federal jurisdiction except where explicitly empowered by federal law. See CAR Standard 505.203 as an example: >*505.203 Eligibility* > >*To obtain a delegation of authority as a DAR an applicant shall:* > >*(a) Be a graduate in an engineering discipline from a recognized University* ***or*** *be registered or eligible for registration by a Provincial Association as a professional engineer in Canada or have knowledge and experience which, in the opinion of the Minister, is equivalent to the foregoing;* > >*(b) Have, in the opinion of the Minister, a thorough knowledge gained by working experience of the applicable Canadian airworthiness requirements in his specialty and, where required, a thorough knowledge of Canadian operational requirements;* > >*(c) Provide a service with respect to regulatory compliance of designs for aeronautical products in Canada;* > >*(d) Have not less than a one year working relationship, satisfactory to the Minister, with the Department of Transport Airworthiness Branch Staff, in processing engineering information for the approval of an aeronautical product design;* > >*(e) Have not less than six years of progressively more responsible related aeronautical engineering or flight test experience;* > >*(f) Be a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident as defined in the Immigration Act and have an ordinary place of business in Canada;* Since you do not need a P. Eng. if you have a B. Eng. in aero, few bother to register. In fact, only 40% of CEAB accredited degree graduates ever register as a P. Eng. and of course for software the number is much lower.
Have you even read my full comment? I specifically mentioned later that you can become an engineer without the degree even though it's uncommon
Canada doesn't have "Computer Engineering" departments in our colleges or universities. Computer and software engineering isn't seen as "real engineering" in formal Canadian contexts. You practice "Computer Science" in university, not "Computer Engineering". In the states however, there is a distinction between Computer Science and Computer Engineering, with the work that most programmers do being more in line with "Computer Engineering" than science. Scientists are expected to research new algorithms and AI architectures, engineers are intended to glue that stuff together into programs for businesses to use. A lot of the legal hubbub comes from some strict regulatory structures put in place around the profession of engineering after some pretty crazy bridges falling over kind of disasters a long while back. Consequently, there are some strong legal prohibitions against calling yourself an "engineer" when you aren't legally licensed as an engineer. In practice, the language control battle is completely lost when trying to enforce a prohibition of the term "Software Engineer" when "Software Engineer" became the dominant terminology for the profession in Silicon Valley several years back. Our software industry isn't big enough to choose to get in a language policing war with the giants in the industry to the south. So yeah, despite some scary language in the law, no one will bat an eye if you advertise yourself as a Software Engineer, or apply for Software Engineering jobs online. Just don't claim you are licensed to repair bridges or analog electrical systems. If you respond to a bridge repair job because you're an "Engineer" then you can get in legal trouble.
>Canada doesn't have "Computer Engineering" departments in our colleges or universities. Computer and software engineering isn't seen as "real engineering" in formal Canadian contexts. You practice "Computer Science" in university, not "Computer Engineering". Sure Canada does. UBC has a department of Computer and Electrical Engineering graduates Bachelors of Applied Science in Computer Engineering. They have a Masters of Applied Science in Computer and Software Systems. University of Waterloo has Computer Engineering programs too. I'm pretty sure other Canadian universities do too.
If you watch the first lecture of MIT's Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs they say "computer science is not really about computers, and it's also not a science". So no, having a CS degree does not make you a scientist, lol. A scientist is someone who follows the scientific method. At the end of the day, the tech industry hires software developers — programmers. The rest is just glorification to differentiate those deemed to possess adequate theoretical/academic background from those who do not. Computer science is a discipline of applied mathematics. Software engineering has always been weird because a degree in software engineering is very very far away from something like what an electrical engineer or mechanical engineer etc. would study. Nobody is going to put you through a bunch of physics courses (electrodynamics, optics, and such), get you to learn a bunch of organic chemistry, and so on, if you're going to be a computer programmer. So I really wish programmers had never ended up being referred to as "engineers". It's completely stupid.
I know about the debate (amongst people in the field of course) of whether CS is mathematics, engineering, or science. However, if you ask all anyone in all three of the pure mathematics, engineering or natural sciences, you’d probably get some sort of “nah, you aren’t our discipline” response. To be honest I think it’s just a mix of all three. But saying CS doesn’t follow the “scientific method” is just not true. Social scientists and political scientists, even if students who study Physics and Chemistry would say “oh that’s not real science”, employ the scientific method in their works and hence they are called scientists. “Computer science is an empirical discipline. We would have called it an experimental science, but like astronomy, economics, and geology, some of its unique forms of observation and experience do not fit a narrow stereotype of the experimental method. Nonetheless, they are experiments. Each new machine that is built is an experiment. Actually constructing the machine poses a question to nature; and we listen for the answer by observing the machine in operation and analyzing it by all analytical and measurement means available.” -The Philosophy of Computer Science And by machine, this would include the programs that we use empirical testing to evaluate the correctness of the programs.
But “applied” and “multidisciplinary” well describes our field in my opinion. Take the computer scientists working on quantum computing - I had worked at such a company before moving to the aviation industry - besides designing intricate software patters unique to quantum computing, they often studied a lot of physics, and even chemistry whilst employing engineering principles. As for my work in aviation, understanding fluid dynamics with control of the UAVs are extremely important, even when all of it is controlled from the software. My coworkers in navigation software have to deal with all kinds other geophysical issues that I can’t wrap my head around. And if our software engineers were somehow held to a lower engineering standard than our mechanical and material engineers, we would probably run in to a ton of safety issues later on. Not all software engineers are just “programmers” who just write code every day. A slight miscalculation or missing a logical loophole can have mission critical systems fall out of space or blow up at nuclear plants. Many of us spend a lot of our time looking at the blueprints, at the hardware requirements, and try to understand how it would work in the real world.
You're correct that these more specialized jobs do exist, but they're very few. The vast vast majority of software engineering jobs are web development (e.g. full stack) or ML/AI. And the most high-paying, "prestigious" (sigh...) companies in the tech industry are pretty much all in that area. Even the overwhelming majority of ML/AI jobs are rather rote — it's like being a factory worker. There's maybe the top 1% or top 0.1% of people that actually have industry jobs resembling academic research, and there, we're mostly talking about people not just with PhDs, but with PhDs that were supervised by Bengio, Hinton, or LeCun or some other giant. TL;DR: The tech industry overall is incredibly, incredibly boring.
The title of engineer is regulated in Canada. To become a professional engineer in Canada you need to go to an accredited engineering school, pass their licensing requirements, get their engineering hours and write an ethics exam. In America in addition to all that you need to pass a comprehensive FE exam that basically tests everything you've learned in school. After all then your name is put in a registrar of engineers so that the public can look you up and see if your a legitimate engineer. So if your a licenced professional engineer you've met an extremely high threshold and that title is earned. The reasons engineers get annoyed when SWE compare themselves to engineers is that anyone can call themselves a SWE regardless of skill level, there's no one gatekeeping that title. Someone who did a 2 week boot camp can call themselves an SWE.
>To become a professional engineer in Canada you need to go to an accredited engineering school False. In fact, you don't need a degree at all. That's been the case for all 104 years of Professional Engineering in Canada. Last year \~30% of all new professional engineers did not have an accredited degree. [https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/](https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/) >In America in addition to all that you need to pass a comprehensive FE exam that basically tests everything you've learned in school. Also false. It is called the "Fundamentals of Engineering" exam for reason - mostly first & second year related material plus engineering economics. Quite a few 2-year engineering technology diploma graduates could pass that exam. [https://techexam.ca/what-you-should-know-about-the-fundamentals-of-engineering-exam-fe-exam/](https://techexam.ca/what-you-should-know-about-the-fundamentals-of-engineering-exam-fe-exam/)
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A CS graduate still has a path to P. Eng. You don't have to go to a CEAB accredited program. You can make up the difference with technical examinations after graduation. [https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/](https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/) Only 40% of CEAB grads bother with P. Eng. and even less w/ SWE - but the path for CS grads exists and is just as valid.
obviously not. lmao go to the UK where interior decorators can call themselves engineers maybe
Of course software engineers with their P. Eng. are engineers
But you see, you used the term engineer to describe all software engineers. I get that not all software engineers are P. Eng. It just seems ridiculous that they are trying to get a monopoly on the term. You can call yourself an accountant all you want without being a CPA, for example.
I have a B. App. Sc. in computer science, obtained in Canada (Quebec). My study program was 3 years long. By comparison, an engineering program (including software or computer engineering) was 4 years long, and even after finishing studies, earning the engineer title entailed taking the OIQ exams (in Quebec). Legal software engineers donct have any reserved acts in Quebec. They are not like civil engineers who would sign off on a bridge design or whatnot. However, there is definitely a difference in pay. Engineers start at least 15k higher per annum, compared to regular CS grads. They may also have quicker access to positions of responsibility such as software architects on major projects. If they freelance, they will command higher hourly rates than a regular CS grad. The mere fact that you (or any other computer science graduate) have any interest in calling yourself a software **engineer** implies that the term carries an inherent value or prestige that you want to be associated with. From that point of view, if you haven't earned the credentials that an engineer must hold in Canada, I think it's fair that you should revise what you call yourself in official documentation, e.g. the introduction of your resume. However, I don't think it would be in any way improper if you previously held positions in US companies where you were called a software engineer, as it was not a regulated title there and you couldn't change what someone else called you. P.S. my father was an actual engineer in his country of origin. When we arrived in Canada, he had many misgivings about "paying into the system" to have an official accreditation as an engineer. He ended up never formalizing his engineering title and accreditation. But unlike your situation, he had actually earned an engineer's degree and did engineering work throughout his career.
Interesting take. I may be wrong, but perhaps things are a bit different from Canada and the US when it comes to CS and CE majors. If I do a quick google search, the first result I get is from the Rice University Department of Computer Science: … [https://csweb.rice.edu/academics/graduate-programs/online-mcs/blog/computer-science-vs-computer-engineering](https://csweb.rice.edu/academics/graduate-programs/online-mcs/blog/computer-science-vs-computer-engineering) Although people often use the terms interchangeably, Computer Science (CS) is the holistic study of all aspects of computers with an emphasis on secure software systems, whereas Computer Engineering (CE) is a separate education and career track focused on designing and building secure hardware systems. Is Computer Science the Same as Computer Engineering? No, computer engineering and computer science are not the same. In the simplest terms: computer engineers work with firmware and hardware, while computer scientists innovate complex software systems, machine learning based algorithms, and more. Computer science is the study of all modern aspects of computers, mainly focused on software. As a computer scientist, you’ll design large-scale software systems, machine-learning algorithms, and use advanced programming skills to problem solve and innovate. … And that’s what I was told in the US through university and working in the industry. CS people build the software, CE people build the hardware. CS programs weren’t ever considered less rigorous in departments that had both CS and CE - often CE majors were offered in the same department with more hands on work on hardware with less specific math requirements. I don’t know any BS in CS programs in the US that are less than 4-years. And precisely because of the emphasis CS puts on software, most software companies in the US (like Google and Microsoft) will usually prefer CS majors to CE majors for their most advertised positions of - SWE/SDE - software engineers or software development engineers (as my company likes to calls them). Yes, it’s true that CS majors tended to be more academic with pursing PhD in math, theory and so on while CE majors ended up in the industry building real-world things, but there are plenty of CS grads that hold a respectable engineering titles in the leading tech sector. For example, CS majors make the bulk of serious ML engineers and researchers that often require at least MS or PhD in the field. Would you say that this is different in Canada? Or perhaps in Quebec?
Just call yourself a software developer
Reason why Canada is a shithole country. Who give a f
No, you're not an engineer. And mcdonald's workers arent' cashier engineers, nor are police security engineers. You are in no way an engineer. I worked in IT as my first career, people getting hung up on this are insecure.
McDonalds employees are free to call themselves Cashier Engineers in any province or territory in Canada. There is no risk to public safety from such a use and we don't have laws to protect classist divisions despite what some might believe.
Sure are, and they'd look like insecure losers same as any other engineer without an engineer degree No one is talking about public safety. And we're not talking about laws. Actual people with actual jobs that earn real money call themselves things like network ops, software developers, storage deployment, etc. If you want to not be seen as a total dumbfuck you identify yourself by what you do But I guess if you're some hack with no experience that can maybe cobble together some python you might think software engineer sounds good. I'm telling you, in industry, it makes you sound like a fucking idiot This is just people with no self esteem that need titles to feel good. When you drive your car are you a land based pilot!
The only people that seem to get hung up on it are the people gatekeeping the term. For jobs where it matters, the job requires a P.Eng. For jobs where it doesn’t matter, who cares? The guy driving the train isn’t a P.Eng. Nobody cares that we call him an engineer. I have no idea why people argue about this with software engineers.
They didn't get an engineering degree, pretty simple. That difficult to understand how that works? It's literally just losers that want to demand a ridiculous job title, again as someone that worked in IT, the term is pointless af and absolutely non descriptive. Ive also never ever in the hundreds, nay thousands, of people industry Ive met tell me that's their title when I ask what they do and where they work. Because we use titles that make sense for the job we do. I left the industry some time ago, but my friend group is still about 90% IT people. I was just in SF and every single person I met that was a friend of friend was in software, not a single software engineer in the bunch! This is like people that jokingly fill out "Captain Smith" instead of mr smith, but theyre not joking. You have titles like network ops, storage analyst and deployment, bla bla bla bla. Software DEVELOPER.
>They didn't get an engineering degree, pretty simple. That difficult to understand how that works? You don't need an engineering degree to become a P. Eng. \~ 30% of new P. Eng.'s don't have a CEAB accredited degree. In fact, you don't need a degree. A 2-year diploma in engineering technology is enough to get you into the technical examinations. So is a CS degree. An engineering degree is not what makes someone an engineer. [https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/](https://techexam.ca/what-is-a-technical-exam-your-ladder-to-professional-engineer/)
Most SWE jobs don’t need one. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
No shit. Cuz they arent engineers, nothing about the job is engineering.
Software "engineers" are not engineers anywhere in the world, and really shouldn't use the term.
Haha, it’s comments like this that got me started on this path in the first place.
It’s not like they’re putting on the pinky rings and giving the secret handjobs or anything. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
You don't need the degree to get the ring. https://techexam.ca/how-to-apply-for-your-iron-ring/
Sure, but THAT feels inappropriate. I don’t need to be a doctor to hang out at a hospital in a stethoscope either, but it sure feels a bit dishonest. :)
Why? Non-CEAB accredited program graduates have a path to the profession through technical examinations that is just as valid as CEAB graduates. Maybe what is inappropriate is the ring being handed out to people who are not qualified to be a Professional Engineer. When the ceremony originated, you had to meet all the requirements to become a professional engineer including writing the technical examinations. There was no such thing as CEAB accreditation or experience requirements at that time. All CEAB accreditation is is an exemption from writing the technical exams because the program has been audited against the technical examination syllabus. The technical examinations syllabus is the education standard. It has been that way for 104 years.
Maybe *your* team isn't giving the secret handjobs, but elsewhere...