Software Engineering as a profession
Aaron Fetterman
Issue date: 11/12/07 Section: News
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Is Software Engineering a profession? It is a job title, certainly. You can major in it, even here at Clarkson. Is it a profession in the same way that medicine is a profession or in the same way that accounting is a profession, or in the same way as professional hockey is a profession?
Timothy Lethbridge from the University of Ottowa gave a presentation on Tuesday, addressing these questions to a group of professors and students, largely from the electrical and computer science department.
A profession is something that you can get paid to do, is recognized by society, requires advanced knowledge, has a code of conduct, and has an association of members.
There are a few established types of professions. Doctors have a practice-restricting license, such that they cannot work without being licensed by the government. Accounting is another type of licensed profession, but it only requires that a legally licensed professional sign off on the final product. There are other programs with optional certifications and no legal rights where certified individuals have passed a rigorous exam. Other professions only require a degree or diploma, like many science professions. Some professions use an apprenticeship model, and other professions are open to anyone with sufficient skill that someone will pay them to do the job. Professors are an example: anyone who is hired to teach at a university can be a professor.
Where does Software Engineering fit into this, though? It is widely recognized publicly - the term "software engineer" is applied in job titles, movies, and writing. It has a body of knowledge, which has been gathered in the Software Engineering Body Of Knowledge (SWEBOK) and IEEE standards. There are codes of ethics established by the ACM and IEEE. There are accredited software engineering programs and avenues for continued education.
There is a problem when you try to define the criteria for membership as a Software Engineer. Is it anyone who does development? This is not clearly defined and does not guarantee that any software engineer will have a base level of understanding. Is it anyone with a Computer Science or Software Engineering degree? Software Engineering, in particular, is a very new degree. Most people in industry do not have these degrees, so it would not be a good definition of the profession. Is it limited to Professional Engineers? There are even fewer Professional Engineers - Texas is the only state which requires any engineer to be a Professional Engineer.
Maybe there should be a separate certification for Software Engineering? With such varied backgrounds in software engineering, from electrical engineers to computer scientists to people without degrees, it would be hard to find a common background on which to test. It would be impractical to attempt to get such a diverse group of people to take a rigorous certification for software engineering. It is also not clear who would administer the certification - there are many different organizations for software engineering, which vary by country and sometimes even by state. The debate over certification is sometimes heated, especially in Canada.
Lethbridge concluded by saying, "there clearly is an established profession of Software Engineers," because people do it. They need to focus on improving the quality of the software they produce and the research that backs up the best practices, but it is still a young and growing profession.
Timothy Lethbridge from the University of Ottowa gave a presentation on Tuesday, addressing these questions to a group of professors and students, largely from the electrical and computer science department.
A profession is something that you can get paid to do, is recognized by society, requires advanced knowledge, has a code of conduct, and has an association of members.
There are a few established types of professions. Doctors have a practice-restricting license, such that they cannot work without being licensed by the government. Accounting is another type of licensed profession, but it only requires that a legally licensed professional sign off on the final product. There are other programs with optional certifications and no legal rights where certified individuals have passed a rigorous exam. Other professions only require a degree or diploma, like many science professions. Some professions use an apprenticeship model, and other professions are open to anyone with sufficient skill that someone will pay them to do the job. Professors are an example: anyone who is hired to teach at a university can be a professor.
Where does Software Engineering fit into this, though? It is widely recognized publicly - the term "software engineer" is applied in job titles, movies, and writing. It has a body of knowledge, which has been gathered in the Software Engineering Body Of Knowledge (SWEBOK) and IEEE standards. There are codes of ethics established by the ACM and IEEE. There are accredited software engineering programs and avenues for continued education.
There is a problem when you try to define the criteria for membership as a Software Engineer. Is it anyone who does development? This is not clearly defined and does not guarantee that any software engineer will have a base level of understanding. Is it anyone with a Computer Science or Software Engineering degree? Software Engineering, in particular, is a very new degree. Most people in industry do not have these degrees, so it would not be a good definition of the profession. Is it limited to Professional Engineers? There are even fewer Professional Engineers - Texas is the only state which requires any engineer to be a Professional Engineer.
Maybe there should be a separate certification for Software Engineering? With such varied backgrounds in software engineering, from electrical engineers to computer scientists to people without degrees, it would be hard to find a common background on which to test. It would be impractical to attempt to get such a diverse group of people to take a rigorous certification for software engineering. It is also not clear who would administer the certification - there are many different organizations for software engineering, which vary by country and sometimes even by state. The debate over certification is sometimes heated, especially in Canada.
Lethbridge concluded by saying, "there clearly is an established profession of Software Engineers," because people do it. They need to focus on improving the quality of the software they produce and the research that backs up the best practices, but it is still a young and growing profession.
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