No, you’re not wrong, but I strongly suspect that you were being kidded with in Andecdote 1.
Speaking of sanitation engineers, do real sanitation engineers exist? Who designs and manages sewage treatment facilities and the like? Did they once call themselves sanitation engineers, until that title was debased by the garbage collectors?
I realize that the discussion here is winding down, but I finally found something I was looking for. From the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying Model Law:
Note that the National Society for Professional Engieering endorses this model law.
Anyway, the point is that this seems to make a clear distinction between “engineers” amd “professional engineers”; the former not being required to be licensed. And that’s a little different than the definition given by the OP.
-zut, PE
What about my friend in California, who wasn’t even allowed to take the CA Civil Engineering exam? At the time, you needed a B.S. in Civil Engineering, plus 2 years’ supervised work experience.
She wasn’t eligible, although she had an M.S. in Civil Engineering but only one year of experience. A legislative oversight, perhaps, but did it make her any less qualified as an engineer? It certainly kept her out of some good jobs.
(FWIW, she passed the exam on the first try as soon as she was eligible, then quit shortly thereafter to become a combination Web designer/muralist/recent new mom.)
#1) Nope. She was dead serious.
#2) As far as sewage treatment goes, there was usually an ME or CE formally in charge of the plant, but many accredited institutions now offer a degree in “Environmental Engineering,” which seems to be a blend of CivE and ChemE. I think that the relevant PE liscence is Civil, but there may be a new one.
As for design, MEs would have designed the stirrers in the digester (for example) and all the other turbo-machinery (pumps, grinders, etc.) and all the other equipment involving moving parts (conveyors, trash gates, etc.). CEs would design or specify all the piping and structual work (there is a lot of concrete involved with those things). EEs would design the power service that makes the whole danged thing run.
A lot of stuff there would be purchased by spec, but a lot more would have to be designed for the unique plant. Even the “bought on spec” stuff was designed by an engineer at some point.
Look around when you go home tonight. Everything from the road you’re driving on to the traffic lights you stop for is the product of some engineer’s skull sweat.
And when you get home and turn on the lights, thank the engineers who designed the power plant and distribution lines.
Don’t get me started on the telephones.
And those who keep the coal flowing and the fires going…
Exactly.
The job doesn’t end when the facility is built.
We’re there to keep them running, and we’re there to decommission them when their service lives run out.
You don’t need to tell me. I may disagree with you on some points of nomenclature, and how the laws governing it should be interpreted, but in fact I have tremendous respect for what you and your real colleagues do. I understand that the question of job titles is a sensitive one for you and I agree that the title engineer has been badly abused.
**
Actually the telephone system has always amazed me. Last night we had a power blackout in my neighborhood, but the phones worked as usual.
I marvel at the fact that the system connects perhaps a billion homes, some multiple times. And the individual phones can operate on the system’s own power supply distributed over the same cables that carry the data.
Good work, E.E.'s 
yes…and you too.
I’m late getting into this, but I’m very suprised that this topic generated so much interest.
Here’s how you know if you’re a real engineer. If you’ve ever worked on (that is, designed, tested, specified, whatever) something such that you’re absolutely certain that if you screwed it up, then;
a)people would die or,
b)It would cost more than you’ll ever hope to earn in your life to clean up the mess.
I don’t have a P.E. but I will claim the title under both above. In some cases, my own life was involved in a).
[hey, this is the pit, grant me a little bravado]
Seriously, in my 25 years in the aerospace business I’ve never run across a case of somebody needing a PE, and I’ve often wondered how, in my line of work, one would ever be needed. I have PE’s working for me, but I didn’t know they had the license until after they got on the job. None of this should be construed as a criticism of licensure - I fully understand the reasons and support the concept. I’d never try to pass myself off as a PE.
Why did I never get licensed? Well, seriously, when I was in school the cost of the testing was worth a lot of pizza and beer money, so I just put it off. If they passed a law saying I needed to be a PE to do what I do, I’d not grumble - I’d take the test or get another job. I suspect it would be much harder for me now than it would’ve been when I was fresh out of school, though.
The only thing I’ve done that might have come close to needing a PE was helping a friend of a friend do some testing on a homebuilt airplane, for which he paid me a day’s salary. Did I do wrong?
Anyway, as far as the “software engineer” title goes, I always chuckle under my breath when I hear it. I do know real engineers (under my definition above) who work almost exclusively with software, but they’d never call themselves software engineers. They’re flight controls engineers, crewstation engineers, weapons or mission equipment engineers who work on things that just happen to be controlled by software.
I don’t though ;).
I understand your frustration and think you have some real justification for it. Though, strictly from my own viewpoint, it does kind of seem to fall more into the “minor irritance” pile, than the “rage-inducing” category. But we all have our pressure points, so obviously YMMV.
As for sewage treatment plants ( and the wide wonderful world of water reclamation/recycling, where I am currently employed ), larger districts typically have slews of engineers. Mostly civil/environmental, but mechanical and electrical as well. At least in our municipality, I think most ( but not all ) direct design work is still contracted out ( this is starting to change ). But initial specs and analysis, oversite, change orders, and modifications get handled by the in-house folks. We are almost always hiring new engineers. Heck we have three continuous openings right now( all Civil Engineers - Water Resource Planning, Office of Water Recycling, and Cost Estimating/Design Review). Anyone looking for a job :D?
I don’t want anyone to get the impression that Devs call themselves “software engineers.” I also chuckle under my breath. No one I work with and no one I know in the undistry refers to themselves as software engineers. It’s just some BS title software companies use.
Anthracite & Exgineer, we are following each others’ dust trails here.
We all know what the deal is, and WE don’t like it.
ROFL let’s all take off for a year (as a body) an’ see what happens to the world !!
j/k we care too much for civilization to do it.
OTHERWISE I propose a DopeFest strictly for engineers.
We can study the occurence of hydraulic jumps in long-necked beer bottles. 
BTW Exgineer , how you doin???
of course…other jobs could say the same wrt both a and b, and I doubt if every aspect of what engineers do is so life-critical.
There have been several of these discussions here over the years.
I honestly do not care what u call them as long as it is not engineer. My problem is the devalueation (sp) of the term.
and how people like to inject it in thier conversations. Meeting someone and telling them u are a Dr … when asked what u do means something… be nice to have engineer mean something to… as far as your educational background and type of work u do is concerned.
Well, I have a problem with the devaluation of proper grammatical usage and spelling. Guess we all have things we don’t like.
I don’t think it’s fair to be quite so dismissive of the term software engineering. A well designed application may require as much planning, configuration, and building work as a dam or a power station. Like Dooku said, however, I don’t think the job title software engineer is appropriate.
I wonder if it’s time to develop some licensing standards for software development? Maybe something paralleling what engineers have, with the EIT and experience leading possibly to, oh, I don’t know, Professional Software Developer.
Sure, as long as you thank the engineers (none of them PEs) who designed the computer and processor with which you made your post, and designed the manufacturing processes that allowed fabrication of that processor.
Yes, garbagemen calling themselves engineers is annoying - but at least it shows that engineering is a respected field. You don’t see anyone calling themselves politician, do you?
What the fuck, pardon me, is this about how there’s no such thing as an engineering degree for people who design software?
There is, although it’s only existed for probably 5 years or so, and it’s called a B.Sc. Computer Engineering. One third of the technical requirement for that degree is typically in the field of proper design, planning, production and documentation of large scale software projects.
Ten years ago it may have been true that there was no degree for that, but it isn’t true now.
EECS has existed at UC Berkeley for at least 15 years. It stands for electrical engineering and computer science. There are several tracks you can take in it. One of them is very much Computer science with little electrical engineering.
Well, we’re agreeing, but you missed my point. Screw up a dam or power station and it makes headline news. Screw up you well designed application, and, oh, well, maybe somebody has to reboot the machine.
Anytime software is put in charge of something like a dam or power station, you can bet a team of real engineers has looked it over forwards and backwards.