Developer or Software Engineer?
Let's explore what these titles communicate and how that influences various things about our professional world.
We started a discussion this afternoon, and we want your thoughts. Like many of you, we have experience with diverse development tools (from C up to point-n-click CMS administration) for many types of projects (native applications, web services, branded sites, etc.) The question of interest is about job titles and their role in community. For our discussion, Let's not try to pick the better of these two titles. Let's explore what is communicated by them and how that influences various things about our professional world.
Specifically, we've wondered about the contrast between the use of these terms in the following contexts:
- Introduced to someone at a networking event
- non-professional introduction
- Hiring talent
- Hiring an agency
- Reading someone's blog (i.e. first impression online)
- Deciding what to call yourself
- Community embrace
1. What is your opinion on the appropriate circumstances for choosing either term?
2. In what ways can these titles influence how we think about and perform our work?
the subtext
Most of the edit iterations of this post were focused on removing the specifics that came up in our conversation. This was done primarily in the interest of starting the conversation without over-influencing it, and to give me and my MTM peers a prompt to participate in the conversation along with you.
