In Canada, to be considered a software engineer, one has to do a bit more than simply getting a baccalaureate (a.k.a. an undergraduate degree). First of all, a graduate has to acquire engineering experience; another engineer has to be able to attest of your experience so you don’t work with other engineers, good luck. Then you have to study a bunch of laws about ethics. From what I heard, the test goes beyond common sense and requires the aspiring engineers to learn a lot by heart. Finally, plenty of fees have to be paid, including a yearly recurring fee of a over two hundred dollars.

Alright you say, this isn’t much different than most professional organizations, and you get to be a “real” engineer, that has to mean something, right?

What is an engineer

In Canada, most of the engineering jobs require the professionals to be part of the organization that is the Ordre des  ingénieurs du Québec, otherwise they can’t actually work. Being part of the organization means that the engineer has done the above tasks, is experienced and most likely competent. For example, only an engineer can approve plans for building various structures, this is called an “acte réservé” or an exclusive act. For sure, if one wants to do work that requires oneself to perform one of these reserved acts, doing what it takes to become an official engineer is a no brainer.

Being an engineer also has a couple of benefits, it can give you access to better deals at banks or a better cellphone plan, better insurance rates because being an engineer means that you probably have a relatively good income (good for paying debts) and that you probably have a good (or decent) head on your shoulder which means you take less risk than the general population, hence the lower insurance rates. There are quite a bit of other advantages to being part of the organization, but I won’t list them all here.

What about a software engineer

So why won’t I become a “real” engineer? Because there are simply no benefits for me. Most importantly, software engineers have no “reserved acts” (yet) which means I can work anywhere I want anyway. Secondly, I can already have access to all the benefits because I’m still part of the organization, simply not as a full-fledged engineer and most (all?) of the companies acknowledge my status as equivalent to being an engineer (better insurance rates, deals at hotels, etc.).

Another new issue that came up is that engineers will now be required to do a minimum of continuous education every year. I’m not saying that’s a bad idea, quite the contrary, but in my case, I already stay up-to-date on my own and since I’m not doing it through one of the official channels, that wouldn’t even count as continuous education.

Also, as I said earlier, it costs over two hundred dollars per year to be known as an engineer.

So, as long as there is no benefit to becoming a “real” engineer, I’ll remain a baccalaureate in software engineering.