Computer Engineering vs Software Engineering

I still stand by what I said two years ago. Now I’ve been hiring, and I’m interested in computer engineering degrees and not software engineering degrees. Of course you look at courses and projects and not department names, but anyone in computer engineering who has had enough software engineering to be competitive in it has missed out on a lot of important computer engineering classes and vice versa.
Sure software engineers should have some basics in computer architecture and logic design, and computer engineers need to learn how to program, but only at pretty basic levels.

My viewpoint is more heavily based on the software side of the industry in the past 20 years, so perhaps as you lean toward the hardware side there is a greater preference for computer engineering. On the software side we see a lot of computer engineers who have plenty of software skills and experience, because anyone with a technical degree these days has that. Certainly in software less attention is paid to the degree name than the specific skills and experience. I can certainly see that some positions require background in computer engineering not found typically in software engineers, but I’d think the companies employing those people would have plenty of need for broader skill sets in other positions.

(I think we disagree about the degree of difference in the degree, d’y’agree?)

I admit that I don’t know for sure what software engineering degree programs teach, except what I see in ads. Those resumes never reach me - I work on the hardware side of a software company. I assume they teach things like development methodologies which I’ve never seen in computer engineering resumes. But I agree that there are lots of jobs for which this is overkill.

Ouch! I like to think that I was writing tight code before going to university. My education in computer science gave me the skills to make that code elegant.

At the time, Computer Science was the only software related major offered at my university. It was heavy in theory but I appreciated that. You can learn how to program anytime, anywhere. The college of engineering had Electrical Engineering but that was about hardware. Some folks did a double major. After I graduated, Computer Science moved into the college of engineering.

Now I hire software engineers. It doesn’t matter to me if a candidate’s degree says “computer science” or “software engineering”. I figure their university offered one or the other and the students didn’t have any say in what it was called.

Rick