Does a degree define being an engineer?
 

Soliciting y'all's input to see if my bias is showing.

At what point does a degree define your trade? Obviously to be a doctor you need a medical degree, but what about an engineer, or an architect?

Im asking because this guy was telling me he's an engineer, but he doesn't have an engineering degree. My first thought was he's engaging in puffery, but later I got to thinking. Maybe I'm being unfair?

Is he a licensed PE? Or the equivalent of whatever that is in the state in question? If not, no, IMO.

I have an engineering degree. And sufficient experience that if I were to take and pass the exams I'd be qualified as same.

But I don't call myself an engineer - that would be false advertising imo.

Had this exact discussion with an in-law who decided that a bachelors in civil engineering made him a civil engineer and we should accept his design for [something].
It was shut down quick when I asked if he could legally sign off on blueprints...
edit: It was compounded when he told another one of them - who's an architect and can actually sign off on stuff - that he wasn't qualified to comment. I LOL'd and mentioned Dunning-Kruger...

if you are employed as an engineer, you are an engineer IMO.

conflating who you are, with what you do for a living, is always problematic. i do not recommend.

In the past it was possible to become a licensed engineer by apprenticeship and be grandfathered in.

There are many different types of engineers, just like doctors. Civil engineers are a lot different than an electrical engineer.

It will be interesting to see the answers from a real engineer, which I an NOT, and never claim to be.

It is much like people that use Doctor in their name. You don't know right away if they are a PhD in ancient French literature, or a brain surgeon or a dentist.

I think any engineer in the building trade has a stamp for drawings etc.

Our best clients are land surveyors and land engineers. They have the stamp to make a map we can produce a legal map, and not just a pretty picture of the ground. We never sell a survey, and we don;t claim to do surveys.

We provide the aerial orthophoto, LIDAR data, AutoCAD format elevations grids, and planimetric files and those go right to the guys with the stamps for them to verify and make legal surveys.

You happen live somewhere with a very strict definition of an 'engineer'. In Ontario you need to be a graduate with an engineering degree to be use the title 'engineer'. You can't be a business grad and call yourself a 'sales engineer', or 'applications engineer'.

A real engineer has an engineering degree and real professional designation. Everyone else is a pretend-gineer.

Can he stamp drawings? Or does he just own a calculator and a pocket protector?

What type of an engineer? I have a friend whose job title is software engineer, but he has no accreditation or any degrees / certifications as such. I would describe him as an applied expert but he's not an engineer.

When I was a lab manager I had technicians working for me whose title was Junior Scientist. They had no scientific education other than the training I provided. So, were they scientists?

As for this "conflating who you are, with what you do for a living" it is not part of the question.

Capt. it is my opinion that the person to whom you refer may be engaging in puffery. Also, if you're using your degree directly then that would be a case of the degree defining your trade.

I have a degree in chemistry which I used to build a career in a chemical lab. Therefore I can claim to be a chemist.

I also have a degree in music that I have yet to use. I no longer play an instrument. So, may I refer to myself as a musician? When people ask if I am I respond by saying that I am an "educated listener" of music.

I have been a Field Engineer for 24 years with GE Healthcare. It's a degreed position and the requirements are a BS in an Engineering program or equivalent experience. My Military time and my private Tech School specializing in Diagnostic Imaging satisfy. Most of the folks I work with have BS in Electronics Engineering Technology.

Internally we refer to ourselves as Engineers, and most of our customers do as well.

However, I never try and imply anything other than what I am specifically working in.

Btw, one of my close friends is a P.E. He and I have had this exact convo. He says "Sir, what you do is miles ahead of what damn near any degreed Engineer can understand. You're an Old School, I can do siht, Engineer. Anyone that challenges that is just puffing"

I'll take his opinion.

Not at all.

I stole this from the webs

Environmental engineers typically need a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering or a related field, such as chemical, civil, or general engineering.

"in reasonable charge of the work". The stamp allows you to do this.

As a Civil Engineer, the stamp is important as much of the design process requires code compliance.

For Mechanical and Electrical, where, IMHO, they are creating new applications and technology, licensing is not essential, as in the aerospace and electronics.

Where these other disciplines intermix as in Civil works like water and sewer treatment then some mechanical and electrical and geotechnical work must be performed by, our under the supervision of an Engineer Licensed in those disciplines.

If you have his name you should be able to see if he is licensed through the online lookup.

https://fbpe.org/licensure/licensee-search/

it is an important distinction. if someone asks who i am, i would say a racer. if someone asks what i do, i would say im an engineer.

so why are they using the engineer? are they using it claim who they are, or what they do?

engineering is an action. not a persona. if you perform the action of engineer, you are engineering.

I don't disagree...entirely. Again it comes down to how you describe engineering. The man I mentioned doesn't plan or design programs he writes the code according to the project goal.

If I build something following the plan that someone else designed, am I the engineer, or are they?

By what you wrote above "performing the action of an engineer" do you mean to include designing a build or just doing the fabrication?

There are so many levels of engineering it's hard to tell. I was an engineer with a BS mechanical engineering at GM. Went to a DOD research lab and I was an "engineering technician." "Engineers" there had masters or Phd degrees and hobnobbed with the physicists.
My friend's title was an "operating engineer" - he was a bulldozer driver.

I would call your friend and engineering tech. He's probably good at his narrow area of expertise, but doesn't have the wide background in theory that makes you as versatile as a degreed engineer.

I personally dont care about a name

I am a degreed engineer, msme.. Work with 100s of enginners. Less than1% pe, a few percent of them not engineering degrees but similar technical degrees: met eet etc. Our company wont give enginnering titles to unrelated degrees.

Some companies don't allow a job title to include the term "Engineer" unless that person is a PE (Professional Engineer) - which means they passed a test and had some OTJ experience.

As said, it really depends on what sort of engineering we're talking about. A civil engineer without a degree and a stamp isn't a civil engineer. A self-taught coder can be a software engineer without question. Your good-for-nothing uncle with a GED can be an operating engineer, too.

So where I'm from, you could put Engr. as a title, like they do with doctors, as in Engr. John Smith. But you would have had to pass a board exam. And it only applies to civil engineers. So people who graduated Mechanical Engineering or Industrial Management Engineering can't put Engr. as a title, because there's no board exam for that. So they are "engineers" but they can't use the title.

Aerospace 101 - Calculus is math in motion (yaw, pitch & roll along with acceleration & velocity).
All the static stationary stuff is XYZ plane math.
Most engineers are XYZ folks.
Statistics is yet another aspect too

Sorta but not everyone with an engineering degree does engineering.