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?
I suppose the same can be said for authors.
You could be an author who writes epic fantasy novels. Or an author who writes high school text books. Or an author who submits science journal articles. Or an author who writes video game walkthroughs.
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.
- Captain Handcannon
- Big Cheese of the Seven Seas
- Luscious Duluth Doddery Landran III the Fourteenth
I am and do basically whatever they need. Please end my misery.
- Janitor
- Babysitter
- Contortionist
I’d still be an “Engineer,” LOL. (I do civil engineering as well as CS, and try to work at the intersection of the two fields.)
Yaml editor? Business therapist? Email author? Paid meeting actor? Scrum participant? Office cynic? Idk.
Lead googler
I would be a cook. I love food.
porn star; that is if i were hot. lol
Learner.
“Embedded control architect”
senior headpalmer
Digital psychoacousticiamusicolograpist
That’s actually my thing I’m working towards but
Music artist
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…
