[Discuss] Programming vs Engineering

[Drew Van Zandt]

The trouble is that a PE certification proves:
1) You managed to make it through an engineering degree program
2) You practiced as an engineer for 4 years or so
3) You can test well. (Which, given that you got a degree, is likely.)

I know people who meet all these requirements, and are actively bad as
engineers.  One of them had his PE certification.

None of the half dozen products he had a key engineering role in during the
time I knew him ever shipped.

If you want other engineers to take these certifications seriously, you
need to not give 'em to guys like this.  More importantly, you need to find
a way to give the certification to the really good engineers out there.  As
long as you have tens of thousands of guys out there who are better
engineers than the PE's I have met, I'm going to hire based on skill,
certification be damned.

For that matter, I'll hire based on skill regardless.  Certifications are
perhaps handy filters for people in HR who don't know enough engineering to
filter in other ways.  If you hire based on certifications (or degrees)
blindly, you'll be sinking your own ship.  I've known too many PhD's who
were useless for anything outside academia.  (That bitterness you hear is
the echo of the sound of me cleaning up after a couple of them over and
over again until management FINALLY realized they were the problem.)

On the other hand, one of the best engineers I know fought her way up from
being a tech with an associate's degree.

I do know a couple of PE's who are good engineers, but the best engineers
I've known have not been.

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Drew Van Zandt
Artisan's Asylum Craft Lead, Electronics & Robotics
Cam # US2010035593 (M:Liam Hopkins R: Bastian Rotgeld)
Domain Coordinator, MA-003-D.  Masquerade aVST
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