A friend and I were discussing recently the interesting phenomenon where despite us having highly unrelated jobs/passions with unrelated skillsets, we are both considered “software engineers” because we happen to write code. I believe this happens because when, say, family asks what we do, it usually feels like they’re mainly interested in the day-to-day as opposed to the core purpose of the work. This makes perfect sense and is fine, but between two people who write code it is probably reductive communication.

This prompted us to strip back the code-writing part and come up with a new job title for each of our occupations; my actual job, and his primary interest. The new titles were far more descriptive of the core work we both do that is probably more salient on a fundamental level than the programming part.

Mine was “software engineer” -> “video compression researcher” His was “software engineer” -> “web platform designer/developer” (using developer in the name still feels like cheating, but we couldn’t think of anything else)

SWEs (or CS students): Do this for yourselves. What does this look like for you?

  • @Phen@lemmy.eco.br
    7•7 days ago

    Software Diagnosticist, maybe?

    My main role lately has been to jump into failing projects and put them back on track, then leave it back with its own team. Sometimes I’m debugging software, other times I’m “debugging” processes or even team structures. Occasionally even the whole idea behind some project is just messed up and nobody realized.

  • @flubba86@lemmy.world
    5•6 days ago

    See, at my job it’s the other way around. I am responsible for:

    • Solution architecture
    • Cloud architecture development
    • Cloud infrastructure design and implementation
    • Data model specification
    • Database schema design
    • Database administration
    • Data cleaning and data review
    • ETL
    • Server administration
    • Web framework developer
    • Frontend developer
    • Backend API developer
    • Mobile app developer
    • Documentation author
    • Troubleshooting
    • Maintenance

    Also I have involvement in: Stakeholder engagement, user education and training, project management.

    I do the work equivalent of around 3 full-time engineers. So to keep it simple, we call my position just “senior software engineer”. I like your idea of disambiguation to better communicate exactly what you do, but I don’t know what you’d call me.

  • Mister Neon
    4•7 days ago

    I wanted to be an archeologist.

    Not only did I fail at my dreams I gave them up for the lie of “job security”.

    • Sockenklaus
      2•6 days ago

      To be honest software development and archaeology have a lot in common.

  • @ChaosInstructor@lemmy.world
    3•7 days ago

    i was systems engineer/head programmer and thought i was lucky getting paid for my pastime. 30+ years later i realised i was not lucky at all. so i quit and today i am a fish monger and it feels great. i know, not an answer for your question…