What this long, rambling article somehow fails to clarify is that in Canada the term “engineer” is as legally meaningful as the term “medical doctor”. There are Canadian universities that have engineering programs for both software and computer engineers. They are educated the same way other types are engineers are. They can later become certified professional engineers through roughly the same means. Only those people can legally call themselves software engineers and computer engineers. The confusion here is that countries like the US make no legal distinction between who can and cannot call themselves an engineer. The term is widely misused and holds little to no meaning at this point, but it still sounds impressive so companies use it in job titles. Canadian companies are free to advertise positions for software and computer engineers, but anyone officially working under those titles must be an accredited engineer. > The letter says APEGA’s “aggressive position” would result in “onerous, restrictive and unnecessary certification requirements” for developers, and harm companies’ ability to compete for talent. “If we cannot effectively compete for the best employees while headquartered in Alberta, we must seriously consider whether this is a place where our companies can succeed,” states the letter signed by CEOs of Benevity Inc., Symend Inc., Neo Financial Technologies Inc. and others. This is silly and blown out of proportion. The company I work for was recently hiring a software developer. We accepted remote candidates from the US. We did not have unusual trouble finding candidates because we didn’t use “engineer” in the title. The word “developer” (formerly “programmer”) works fine. One of the US candidates asked us if this was an engineering position. He was asking that because in the US job titles with “engineer” in their name imply higher level work that you get paid more for. We explained the whole thing about the term “engineer” in Canada and he understood. No problem.