> like building a bridge, and some human needs to certify it's "good" and if they're wrong, people die
Even in things like civil engineering jobs, not all of the work is done by the PE, they just need to review it as if it was their own work. Some tech industries taking over critical parts of life could use oversight like that.
It is practically impossible to get a PE in the defense industry because of the apprenticeship/vouching requirements. If your employer has no PEs, you can't ever qualify for one.
That, but more to the point, the value of the term is based on the strong history of regulation and common use, which SWEs as an industry have taken advantage of and diminished.
Which, I get that not everyone agrees on licensing law and philosophy, but it should at least signify mastery of the topic via formal education or apprenticeship.
Most PEs have both of those, engineering degree and licensing internship.
How many SWEs have either? I honestly don't know.
If you don't have either, you are at best senior technician, which should be respectable enough, but for title inflation.
Mastery of what topic? What I consider important for my work in safety critical systems is probably very different from whatever you use in your presumably different field. Both of those are different again from e.g. GameDev, HPC, or operating systems and all of them encompass domain knowledge not adequately captured by existing degree programs. How would a useful certification be realized, as opposed to mere credentialism?
I strongly disagree that SWEs have "taken advantage of and diminished" anything. The practice of ignoring PE licensure extends well beyond software and was well established as nonsense before the dotcom boom.
> How many SWEs have either? I honestly don't know.
Almost all of them, in practice.
> If you don't have either, you are at best senior technician, which should be respectable enough, but for title inflation.
Engineering as a discipline is much older and nuanced than PE licensing bodies. If you are applying the science and practice of problem analysis and design synthesis you are an engineer.
The ones that matter, do this. In many states if you are building anything for a government or business where lives are at stake, a PE is involved and there's legal liability for the engineers that certify something.
But the whole PE thing is nonsense. We can get around this with malpractice policies/insurance and still have a qualified human certifying things, and reasonable bodies rejecting that certification if they don't feel the human that does it is up to snuff. The whole PE dance is just a dog and pony show.
Maybe we should be concerned about more than just direct loss of life? What about data leaks, for example? It might be nice if there were some risk that software engineers could lose their license over eg. plaintext passwords, or be protected by a governing body if they need to take a professional ethics stand against their employer.
Even in things like civil engineering jobs, not all of the work is done by the PE, they just need to review it as if it was their own work. Some tech industries taking over critical parts of life could use oversight like that.