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0 pointsfirefoxd1d ago0 comments

A month ago, I fell back into reading patio11's "don't call yourself a programmer" and I found it fitting. The core of the message wasn't about the title we assign to ourselves but the "other career advice".

I felt compelled to write "don't call yourself a Software engineer" [0], because we are still falling into the same trap of thinking we are hired only for our technical skills.

If we are just looking at a skills and these are assessed by parsing through a resume, then OP is right. We are all at a disadvantage. But the job search starts way before you are looking for a job. It's all about the connections you make along the way.

[0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/you-are-an-ai-enabled-engineer-now

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ItsYan1d ago

I feel like this advice is not very useful because when you call yourself a software engineer or programmer, you are doing it in order to sell a service.

Your customers are companies looking for someone to slot into a box called "software engineer" and so you sell yourself as such. Nothing wrong with that.

We should also note who Patrick was at the time. He was an SEO consultant and in general a business development expert. It just also happened that he was able to code. And he was very very early to the field. An SEO expert was barely a thing.

So if your only skill is software development, then of course you would call yourself that. And if your main skill is SEO or some other marketing channel, then you call yourself that.

I think the real takeaway from the advice "don't call yourself a programmer" is to search the market for higher paid opportunities, where you can still leverage coding. And you can call yourself a programmer while doing so.

xtracto1d ago

>Engineers in particular are usually very highly paid Cost Centers, which sets MBA’s optimization antennae to twitching. This is what brings us wonderful ideas like outsourcing, which is “Let’s replace really expensive Cost Centers who do some magic which we kinda need but don’t really care about with less expensive Cost Centers in a lower wage country”. (Quick sidenote: You can absolutely ignore outsourcing as a career threat if you read the rest of this guide.) Nobody ever outsources Profit Centers. Attempting to do so would be the setup for MBA humor. It’s like suggesting replacing your source control system with a bunch of copies maintained on floppy disks.

Really good stuff haha.

EDIT: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr...

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