I think that is the reality most developers find themselves in. I doubt it's been any different for Patrick until the consultancy spinoffs he can now pull on account of his personal brand.

So I kind of agree with Jacques here, with the exception that I don't call myself a programmer in conversation with people outside the field, since it sounds a bit like "punch card operator". That doesn't change the fact that I really am a programmer first and foremost.

By that rationale, teachers are glorified dictionaries, accountants are glorified calculators, and lawyers are glorified secretaries.

"Programmers don't 'unemploy' people"

Bullshit. If I build an automated fraud detection system for a bank and they lay off 50 people in charge of fraud detection after it goes live, I most certainly made their jobs redundant. If I build a more efficient control system for an automobile plant, and they lay off operators as soon as it goes live, I've certainly made their jobs redundant. Efficiency kills jobs by definition. You only create more jobs when you start in a new area, or as a competitor. And even then it's only temporary until efficiencies kill those jobs as well.

"As a ground rule, as long as you are calling other peoples modules you're not yet programming"

Then, as a ground rule, as long as you're drawing triangles, arches, and straight lines, or using a CAD program, you're not yet architecting. As long as you're using 2x4s or windows made of glass you didn't blow yourself to build a house, you're not yet building.

Why does everything have to be built fron scratch in an intellectual vacuum in order to be "real"? Isn't the whole point to stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before?

"Whether you use the word programmer to describe yourself or not has very little to do with what your bank statement tells you at the end of every month."

Actually, it has a LOT to do with what your bank statement tells you at the end of the month. The world runs on respect. And respect comes from other people. Give yourself a title that engenders respect and you'll find yourself able to negotiate FAR better deals for yourself than you would with a less respectable "I'm-just-a-replaceable-cog" title.

"And in such places (and unfortunately also in quite a few smaller ones) the market value of what a person doing your work is charging is what will determine your pay"

No, the market value of a person with your TITLE is what will determine your pay, unless you're known to be a pushover who accepts promotions without pay increases. And if such a 'promotion' happens, you gladly accept it anyway, and then leave 6 months later with your new title to leverage a better salary.

I am a programmer because it's what I like to do. People pay me money to do it. And when I go home I read about it, talk to others about it, and I practice, practice, practice. I think about how I can write better software, reduce the amount of bugs, test better designs, and improve my productivity. I think about programming all of the time.

And like Jacques, I'm not afraid to tell others that I'm a programmer. I think most people understand what that is by now. I write programs for computers. If I say "Systems Analyst," or "Solution Architect," they will probably look at me funny and ask what that means. In an interview... it will probably be passed over without a second thought. So I call myself a programmer.

And I call myself a programmer with a bit of pride. It isn't an easy profession and involves far more than typing in a bunch of things that make computers do stuff. Experienced employers will have realized this before sitting some one such as myself down in an interview. They want someone with enthusiasm for the craft, the experience building many different systems, and the ability to learn. There was a time when I would have accepted any programming job. However there comes a point where talking to yet another company who just wants to replace a cog in their machine becomes a waste of your time. It is hard to be good at this job and experience and ability has a cost associated with them.

So yes, I am a programmer. Thanks Jacques for writing this.

I could tell people I can program Excel interop in .NET, or I could tell them I saved my company dozens of hours a week by automating an administrative process. To non-programmers, only one of these descriptions sounds interesting. A programmer can hear "Excel interop in .NET" and infer automating administrative tasks. A business person, generally, cannot.

Patrick's essay was about being explicit about the value you provide, not about picking a fancier name for yourself.

In more formal contexts, like resumes and job apps, I call myself a software developer, because that's a more encompassing description of what I do. Software development is not just programming, even if that's the most obvious and the most fun part.

My employers call me whatever they want to call me. That's been technical staff member, programmer, software engineer, etc.

I never voluntarily call myself a software engineer. I've never worked under the supervision of a PE who was legally responsible for my work, and I've never been on a track working toward my PE. Very few software developers work in that environment.

I don't mind the informalization of the term software engineer, but I don't use it because I've never, ever worked in an environment where programming or software development was practiced as an engineering discipline using national or international standards of practice or product. Software development where I've been, and where most people are, is much more an individual art than a community science. So I don't want to give the impression that what I'm doing is in any way a legal, formal engineering practice.

The problem is, 'programming' as such is the end of a process. That process begins with talking to a customer about his or her idea/business problem, and asking questions and (basically) doing consulting to help the customer understand what his or her problem really is. Once that's clear, I write a proposal that outlines how I would address that problem, all in strictly high-level layman-understandable language - no mockups, no screenshots, no technical language, nothing. Then, once we agree on that, I contact a designer to help out with the design of the app, and to think about new and novels ways to make the interface as simple as possible. We show it to the customer, refine it, and get an agreement on all that stuff. And then, finally, three months since that first meeting, I can start with the programming.

So yes, I'm a programmer - but only if an academic is a writer, if an architect is someone who draws, and if a manager is someone who talks to people.

This statement doesn't make much sense when you think about it. It seems to be a lazy riff off of:

"Fast, cheap, quality: Pick any two"

Each of those characteristics are in competition with each other. Doing something fast often hurts quality and/or cheapness. Doing something cheaply may take longer and may harm quality.

Job security vs. job satisfaction don't really compete with each other. In fact, being more satisfied (i.e. happy) at your job may lead to better security indirectly, as a happy worker is a more productive, engaged, and charismatic worker.

Perhaps JMJ is trying to appeal to the commonly-held notion that fulfilling, satisfying jobs are ones that don't pay well - teaching, research, social work, etc. OK, it applies to certain sectors. But not across all sectors. A failure to recognize the inherent structural differences and opportunities between job fields (and public vs. private) hurts whatever rhetorical argument he's trying to make here.

The fact is I AM a Software Engineer. I have a degree in Applied Science and I have my Iron Ring. I am registered with my provincial Professional Body. Saying that, I am not just a "Programmer" (I do not mean to sound derogatory) but there is a difference in the fields that I think is getting blurred.

I turned down many jobs that wanted "programmers" because I am an "engineer" and don't want to fall behind in my primary field to take a job that is loosely related. I code at home in my own time releasing small projects only recently digging into bigger ventures that are potentially able to turn profit but that's beside the point. Where I am now is an engineer's job. I do programming yes, but my job requires more than an understanding of computer architecture and design pattern competency to succeed.

I feel like I'm sounding like an ass. I am much more humble I swear! The point is that Software Engg != Programmer we need to stop fooling ourselves and allow the segregation to occur so that programmers are properly recognized and respected for their work!

Conflict management, and the other business-focused tasks he mention are completely separate from the programming side in the corporate world. I worked at a company where the software developers spent 90% of their time writing code based on tasks, and nearly no time on these other facets described in the article.

Suffice to say, I think that more focus should be spent on what people are doing, and not what they're calling it. Which is sort of what the author was saying, in the end.

I see a wonderfully self-referential thing happening when people focus on the title of the essay. Maybe people do focus more on titles than they should -- both essay titles and job titles. Maybe job titles are as important as essay titles and email subject lines.

Patrick's essay was adaptibly engineered. If titles are what get through to people, the essay title will convey what's imprtant. Otherwise, the essay body will convey what's important.

Usually it comes out to something like this, "Do we take pleasure in our art and pursue the art, or do we take pleasure in selling our art in pursuing that?"

It's painfully obvious that good businesses pay people to create a positive value proposition for them. Therefore, if you are running your career like a business, you need to be seeking to maximize your value proposition. Part of that is passing yourself off as a maximal value creator. That is one half of the essence of patio11's point.

A lot of the artists I've dealt with are content to seek their art and to work in badly paid jobs to maximize their pursuit of their art. As someone who can program computers, we can draw value from our art. We do not need to hack at night and work as a barista during the day. That is the other half of the essence of patio11's point.

No one has to take patio11's advice, and their priorities may not align with his priorities.

But if you're maximizing wealth creation through being a programmer, you need to stop 'being a programmer/hacker/ninja/rock star/operator' and start 'being a person who creates wealth for other people via technology'.

The original essay could also be called "A Loser's Guide To Careers" -- it's a realistic assessment of the options and opportunities offered to most engineers. It recognizes that most readers will be, in the grand scheme of things, on the short end of the stick and will have relatively little to bargain with. Accordingly, it dispenses cold, rational advice for how to best bargain with that limited leverage.

Both the Sociopath and the Loser are realists, it's only that the Loser has little meaningful leverage; he accepts this and so makes the best time-money bargain he can negotiate.

The Clueless, however, is clueless -- he would like to believe he is making a difference by keeping his head down, working hard and following the rules; instead, he is setup to be a mediocre middle manager at best, and a scapegoat at worst. And this essay could best be called "A Clueless Defense." That is not meant to slight any of Jacques technical achievements or prowess. Instead, I apply the term "clueless" here to mean that Jacques is being hopelessly naive. This essay is essentially a celebration of Jacques refusal to accept the situation in which he and other engineers find themselves: a world where those who hold the largest stakes (in any venture we choose to participate in) generally have no clue what value we provide and are incented to reduce our stakes.

(Yes, there are exceptions, even successful ones, and I think I work at one of those. But I don't blindly believe it, and I wouldn't bet my life or my family's future on it.)

I could write a lot more about my feelings on "I am a programmer,": I don't like it. I've already said that I find it naive and I don't want to cause unnecessary offense. Still, I commend Jacques for writing it at all and there's no reason to alienate him in disagreement, because it's an honest expression of his feelings. But I do want to say that, as a worldview, the idea of it being useful for understanding the trajectory of your career... well, I'm reminded of a line from the Futurama episode "Love and Rocket":

"Oh I would dearly love to believe that were true. So I do."

(And also -- the original essay has nothing to do with job titles.)

[0] http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o... [1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...

Job security, job satisfaction, good pay. Pick any two.

I've been keenly aware of that for a while now. For someone like me, someone who chooses the first two, it stings a lot until you come to terms with it and make it your conscious choice. It all has to do with one's priorities and no combination is bad in itself. You just need to be aware of these things or it might be a source of unhappiness for you.

From the article:

"Programmers are guys and girls that can take real-world problems, that can analyze those problems and that use that analysis to come up with a way to improve the world, usually in an incremental but sometimes in a revolutionary manner by solving those problems (hopefully) once and for all."

You are a systems analyst. The difference (to me at least) is that a programmer solves the presented problem by writing a program, a systems analyst solves the problem by tuning or refactoring the system. Sometimes all that takes is programming, but sometimes it takes more than that, a new data base schema, a different partitioning of roles of machines participating in the solution, user education, or even getting the rules of the game changed.

Both articles are about the way you present yourself, not really about the "programmer" label. Sure, your label is part of what do for a living, but the important point brought up by both articles is that you have to recognize what your value is in the workplace and use that as your selling point in order to achieve job satisfaction and/or recognition (that's the way I understood them anyway).

I personally don't really think there is a difference. They are essentially the same thing. I'm both and I don't really see a case where I'd call myself one and not the other.

So who is making the distinction? Us (engineers) or other people?

If you really want to make the assertion that non-engineers are making the distinction between programmers and software engineers, who do you think told them what the difference was?

But comparing programming to actual, real-world engineering is a different kettle of fish. Engineers make things with actual physical requirements - if they're not met, people will die. You're not going to be doing proper engineering unless you can sue the engineers for the wholes in their software that caused people to lose money from their bank. Sure it works and may well solve a problem, but it's not engineered.

Real software engineering is using formal methods to do your utmost to prove that your stuff actually will work (Intel does that for some of their chip development) or make 5 different control systems for your rocket and have them vote on the correct course to add extra backup to prevent fuckups (NASA did this for the Apollo iirc - the EU Ariane didn't, so they had a rocket crash at one point).

Until that happens, you're just going to be developing sandcastles - you're going to have buggy software that will break at some point - because software development is so fast that it's not worth the effort to engineer from the get-go.

In other words, coding is coding - you can have good coding that uses best practices - but if you call it engineering you're deluding yourself in most cases.

Jacques is essentially saying, "I'm a programmer, and I'm secure in that. Even when I'm just gluing existing code together, I'm damn good at it. I know that being a programmer who hacks code, first and foremost, doesn't make me a replaceable cog."

Others are not satisfied to think of themselves as doing gritty work that is not always an act of creative expression or a uniquely inspired solution. If I'm just wiring stuff together, the thought goes, surely anyone can do that? Ah, but the creativity lies in the problem solving, and that's what the employer/client cares about anyway. So I'm a problem-solver, first, and a programmer second.

I think some people are happy to be "just programmers" or "programmers first" and others are "programmers second."

In reality, there aren't two different jobs called "Software Engineer" and "Programmer" across companies, though glamour of title may be a hint as to how a company values and treats their programmers/engineers. If you have 20 years of programming experience and are hired to write code, you're a programmer by default. Whether the work is dull or interesting, creative or rote, or paints you as an "artiste" or a "cog in a machine" depends on the job rather than what you call yourself.

It can't hurt to bill yourself as a problem-solver with business and entrepreneurial savvy, etc., as companies will always say they want people with iniative and higher-level thinking, even if they aren't prepared to let you exercise it. Put another way, no potential employer is going to say, "We're looking for a programmer, but it says here you're an engineer. Are you sure you're not over-qualified for this position?" Your self-given title won't save you. On the flip side, a good company looking for highly creative engineers will know that many of them call themselves "programmers."

In summary, I see the "don't call yourself a programmer" advice as coming out of fear of being a replaceable menial worker, more than reflecting any reality about hiring practices or the deep nature of programming. Jacques's argument is, "Programming can be pretty menial sometimes, but good programmers are hard to replace. So avoid the duller work, and solve people's problems, and you can have a happy, highly-paid career."

Yes, efficiency kills (old, existing) jobs, but that gives new leverage to expand production beyond what it was before.

That's why the wheel, the industrial revolution, etc. have all increased the well-being of the world, not decreased it.

It's called progress.

  > It isn't an easy profession and involves far more than typing in a bunch of things that make computers do stuff.

  > I'm not afraid to tell others that I'm a programmer. I 
  > think most people understand what that is by now. I write 
  > programs for computers. 

That said, coding is what we do to achieve something. Maybe you're trying to make it easier for your support team to track tickets, or helping your client's customers save the most money.

I get that you're proud of your development skills, but at some point your software has to solve a business need, and you need to understand what the need is and how your software is solving it. All the unit tests and properly factored code won't mean anything if you don't. You'll write unnecessary features, or miss writing necessary ones.

Patrick's point as far as I understood it was that we all understand this but we're not billing ourselves that way. If I'm in an interview, or discussing my work with a non-technical associate, I emphasize my ability to understand business needs and write software to meet them. When I talk to technical folks, I emphasize that I unit- and integration-test all of my code and that I understand why DRY code is great.

  > The problem I had with Patrick's essay is how derogatory 
  > it is to what we do.

I don't pretend that my past jobs were "automating IPTV interface interactions" or "enabling alternative business transaction venues"... I was programming what was needed. Its a white lie the industry has gotten comfortable with and I think we'd be better off if this path was never went down in the first place. People prettying up their titles have essentially "robbed" honest ones ("I'm a f*king programmer") from being treated in the same regard.

I actually had my company change my official job title at one point in my career to "Software Developer". I have an undergraduate degree in engineering (partially because I wanted to rebel against my parent's wishes for me to do CS). Software cannot be engineered like a bridge. Structural engineering is very narrowly scoped. You have a design load, comprised of live loads like wind and moving cars and static loads from the weight of the structure itself. There are entire "cookbooks" of formulas used to compute the theoretical, accepted thickness of the support beams and bolts. There is standardized everything, from the project management terminology to the thread count on the bolts. After graduating, if you gain four years (in some states, less) of practical engineering experience, you can take the Professional Engineer (PE) exam. In some cases, to prove your experience, you need to submit three inches thick of paper calculations you have done while working. The PE exam is rigorous and graded on a curve. But once you pass, you get the pride and responsibility of having a seal that you can use to emboss blueprints. That says you take responsibility for the work. Software development is not engineering, and I have strong philosophical discussions with those programmers who insist on that term.

Software development is creative problem solving. You do not have much creativity in structural engineering.

The UK and parts of Canada may recognize and regulate people with this title, but I don't believe that the same rigor _can_ be applied to building software.

You would have to work with formally verified (and I mean that in the mathematical sense) hardware and software all the way up and down the stack (that would include the language and compiler you utilize). You would then have to formally verify your own software on the stack you are deploying to. Only then would you be approaching the rigor that other Engineering professions are held to.

Categorizing everyone who works in the modern economy as either a "sociopath," "clueless," or a "loser" is utterly ridiculous and deeply offensive.

Moreover, "The Office" is not a basis for drawing general conclusions about the working world.

This very rarely happens, but I'm not willing to finish reading an article that spouts this kind of hogwash.

Not saying I necessarily agree with this, but merely commenting on the interesting parellels. (I'm almost finished with the Gervais Principle series now, and it's fascinating.)

Bad code won't kill people? I think any longtime reader of HN can think of a few real-life stories that would contradict this.

I studied computer engineering and yes, I remember those of us more on the hardware side thinking the ones on the "soft" side of the engineering were the lazy ones. Having been more involved in programming projects since then, I've seen the great value in being able to "engineer" software that meets highly specific specs and anticipates future needs, upgrades, and maintenance. Neither of those are necessarily related to good programming, and the failure to achieve both in mission-critical software will lead to deaths

* and as far as I can tell, "real" engineers do not get individually sued for physical failures, unless there's a rare instance in which an individual engineer can be proven to be malicious or grossly negligent.