My apologies for potentially hijacking this, but... this is exactly why the term "software engineer" bothers me. Yes, the software you write isn't likely to cause a shopping mall to collapse on a crowd of people, but there can be huge financial and societal responsibility here, and yet, almost every software license in existence completely disclaims that. Engineering comes with a tremendous amount of ethical and legal responsibility.
...sorry for the sarcasm but this is a message student engineers internalize in part because it is pushed by companies they want to work for but can't explain why. They don't have strong boundaries between why it might he a justifiable philosophy for Facebook but not for Boeing.
Agreed. I'm a software developer who has a degree in mechanical engineering and changed over. I cringe at calling myself an engineer in my current role.
