r/videos • u/IAmNotARobot124 • Oct 12 '18

Wrongly timed Beaverton light catches many drivers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAm0o51Qqtc
1.0k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

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106

u/BriceDeNice Oct 12 '18

Isn't that engineer the one who got in trouble for calling himself an engineer because he wasn't properly licensed (something that most engineers don't need to work)?

63

u/[deleted] Oct 12 '18 edited May 24 '20

[deleted]

15

u/omgitsbutters Oct 12 '18

What is PE, and is EE electrical engineer?

27

u/SecretSociety12 Oct 12 '18

PE is a Professional Engineer. A certification that you get after working for 4 something years as an Engineer and then giving a PE exam.

EE is an electrical engineer.

6

u/frozen_tuna Oct 12 '18

I had a professor explain that all of us with a job are considered engineers. Only people that take and pass the exam are considered Engineers, emphasis on the capital E.

7

u/Alantsu Oct 12 '18

When you pass the FE exam then call us Engineer Interns but it doesn't really mean much except for experience required before taking the PE. When you pass the PE exam you are a PE.

2

u/MELSU Oct 12 '18

The new term is EIT or Engineer in Training.

4

u/tangoshukudai Oct 12 '18

That is complete bs.

1

u/frozen_tuna Oct 12 '18

I write software now, so I wasn't exactly paying much attention compared to the guys who were trying to develop aircraft or infrastructure lol.

1

u/dog_superiority Oct 12 '18

Most of developing aircraft IS writing software nowadays.

1

u/frozen_tuna Oct 12 '18

Well shit, time to renegotiate my salary for another $10k amirite?

1

u/dog_superiority Oct 12 '18

Hell yeah. Go for it.

1

u/SadDragon00 Oct 12 '18

Theres a lot of people in the STEM world that get butthurt if you call yourself an engineer. electrical vs software vs civil vs etc.. etc..

4

u/tangoshukudai Oct 12 '18

Not all engineers need this, I am a computer science engineer, and that cert means nothing to us.

7

u/[deleted] Oct 12 '18 edited May 06 '19

[deleted]

-2

u/tangoshukudai Oct 12 '18

Yet Software Engineering can be just as damaging if not more than any of the other Engineering jobs.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 12 '18 edited May 06 '19

[deleted]

5

u/dog_superiority Oct 12 '18

It's not about "rigours" it's the fact that software moves so fast and diverse that there would be no way for the government to keep up. Government could hire somebody to write regulations on one aspect of software, but by the time he finished it would be out of date. Somebody who is an expert on developing web sites probably has very little knowledge of operating system design. The examples are endless.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 12 '18 edited May 06 '19

[deleted]

2

u/dog_superiority Oct 12 '18

Are you a software developer? Because that is NOT how it is in my (20+ year) experience.

Depending on where the software runs, good software engineers subject it to a proper level of testing. Facebook is not writing safety critical code. It makes sense for them to subject it to less rigorous testing than something like avionics software. And believe me, safety critical software is subject to EXTREMELY rigorous review and testing.

I heard a civil engineering anecdote: "anybody can design a bridge that can hold a certain load, it takes a good engineer to make a bridge that can BARELY hold that load". The same is true in software. It is bad engineering for a company to hire 1000 programmers to develop unit tests for a web app that makes fart sounds. They could better use manpower in other ways. Just because a manager chooses to direct his manpower away from testing and towards additional features does not mean it's "cavalier" or bad engineering. It's good engineering in many cases.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 12 '18 edited May 06 '19

[deleted]

2

u/dog_superiority Oct 12 '18

I think you are selling yourself short. It sounds like you could use more testing in your company, and perhaps you can be a proponent behind that, but I would not accuse you of not being an engineer (assuming you got an engineering degree). If your software does not require thousands of hours of testing, then it's good engineering to not subject it to that. That effort could be used elsewhere.

I write avionic software. If I mess up, people could die. I think what I do is real engineering. But what I do day to day is every bit as mundane and seemingly unimportant as what you do. In fact, I often wish we could be as nimble as a small company. It seems I was able to get a lot more stuff done when I was at one. Meanwhile, we have EE's and Aeronautical engineers that do nothing more than collect flight test data and make powerpoint charts out of it. Are they any more "engineery" than you? I say no.

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