The software world is a mind-boggling riddle for some people who are education-focused, to define who a software engineer is.
They think that for people to work in this field, they must have the required accredited license from a reputable institution else, they consider the person to be a pure 0. They paid a lot of money and sweated a lot to get the degree / license and it’s understandable that they will feel very uneasy when they find out who a software engineer is. It’s even more understandable if they are still footing the loan bills. It’s a lot of fun to engage with such people as they tend to bog down others with their academic credentials.
Someone took a computer science course. Another one took a software engineering course. Then, according to them, the first person is a computer scientist and not a software engineer. The person is a complete noob in coding softwares just because he does not have a software engineering credential.
Someone finished a bootcamp or glovecamp. They managed to crack Google’s entry-level rounds. Google employs the person as a software engineer. But according to these people he is still not a software engineer as he did not take a software engineering course.
Now the person works for Google. He climbs the ladder. He even has time at some cool department in there. He shifts to another company or startup. He also published ground-breaking papers. He is still not a software engineer as he did not take the divine software engineering course.
Someone is an OpenSource contributor with no degree whatsoever, over time he becomes the maintainer of a Linux component. Over time he becomes a core maintainer of the project. He is also a maintainer of several other prominent projects. When such education-minded folks need Linux expertise, they consider this person as a 0 as he did not take a software engineering course.
Someone authors a language. He has a doctorate in compiler theory. When their company needs expertise to work on their codebase written in this language, they won’t consider the author’s profile as he does not have a software engineering degree. No way they’d employ him as a software engineer at their company.
At their company, they are also wary of developer toolings. They definitely verify whether the web framework that they use, the terminal that they use the operating system that they use, the browser that they use, the email client that they use has been coded by people who have a software engineering degree as they must be sure to run their business on pieces oozing from competency. They investigate whether Google, Microsoft etc indeed employed people with software engineering degrees to build those components.
Those respected software engineers are indeed brilliant. They meritoriously earned their nitwittedness degrees. They should work on getting their next license: The intelligence degree.
They also don’t use LinkedIn as they are unsure whether people who coded the Ui and the backend have software engineering licenses. So, they won’t see this post. What a relief!