Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Being a computer programmer does not make me a software engineer.

Deep sigh before I begin. This is yet another post borne of frustration in talking with recruiters and hiring managers. Now that the sigh is out of the way.

A computer programmer is not a software engineer.

There. Wrote that bit.

Software engineers do a lot of tasks in addition to programming. Please see:

• The Wikipedia article on software engineering
• The IEEE’s Software Engineering Body of Knowledge
• The Encyclopedia of Software Engineering

Once you have finished those, perhaps you will agree that being a computer programmer does not make me a software engineer.