Oregon Fines Man for Being an Engineeer

[Ben]

Not The Onion.

Man writes Oregon state engineering board with a letter of concern regarding traffic lights. He mentions that he's an engineer to back up his points. The result?

"ORS 672.020(1) prohibits the practice of engineering in Oregon without registration … at a minimum, your use of the title 'electronics engineer' and the statement 'I'm an engineer' … create violations."

In January of this year, Järlström was officially fined $500 by the state for the crime of "practicing engineering without being registered."

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/man-fined-dollar500-for-crime-of-writing-i-am-an-engineer-in-an-email-to-the-government

[makattak]

Officious bureaucrats, tar, feathers, rail. Some assembly required.

[mtnbkr]

Engineers are very protective of their title and many locales require anyone calling themselves an "engineer" to be licensed of hold a professional engineering certification.

This is not necessarily the state overreaching, but engineers themselves putting this framework in place to protect their "value".

ETA: often, "professional engineers" take offense at people like me, Revdisk, and others calling ourselves network engineers or security engineers because we don't have a professional accreditation as "engineers". 

Chris

[Brad Johnson]

The story is from 2014. Still illustrates why people hate bureaucrats, though.

Järlström has continued his fight since then. I think some DC rights group has joined him in a lawsuit against the state for essentially being a bunch of officious idiots.

Brad

[Ben]

The story is from 2014. Still illustrates why people hate bureaucrats, though.

Järlström has continued his fight since then. I think some DC rights group has joined him in a lawsuit against the state for essentially being a bunch of officious idiots.

Brad

Ah, sorry. I saw it posted today on Gentlemint and assumed it was a new story.

[RevDisk]

Engineers are very protective of their title and many locales require anyone calling themselves an "engineer" to be licensed of hold a professional engineering certification.

This is not necessarily the state overreaching, but engineers themselves putting this framework in place to protect their "value".

ETA: often, "professional engineers" take offense at people like me, Revdisk, and others calling ourselves network engineers or security engineers because we don't have a professional accreditation as "engineers". 

Ayep. On one hand, I understand the desire to keep quality high with strict requirements. Problem is, structural engineering and whatnot has been around in an organized fashion for about two hundred years and guilds go back much further. Network and security engineering is about twenty years old in the modern sense of the term. Sorta.

The telco version of a network engineer goes back hundred years and it WAS a very strict guild. You had to work for AT&T and you did things the AT&T way. When telcos no longer owned communication, there was no guide/board/etc handover. The older engineering branches have zero interest in taking over this new branch of engineering. It's moving too fast to keep a good handle on anyways. There's no universal certs. The certs change all the time. Too many vendors issue their own certs. College and university programs often have nothing to do with the real world requirements.

I'm not overly worried. It'll be the wild west for another fifty or a hundred years before network engineering, security engineering, embedded device engineering, etc actually matures and becomes responsible. We're still in the days of lawlessness, making things up as you go, lack of standardization or meaningful credentials, etc. That's why experience matters to intelligent bosses and certs/degrees are for passing the HR filters.

[Perd Hapley]

I think some DC rights group has joined him in a lawsuit against the state for essentially being a bunch of officious idiots.

But they're the state. They're registered officious idiots.

[MillCreek]

What I thought was interesting about the story was to wonder that if he had applied for registration as a professional engineer, would Oregon have recognized his Swedish qualifications?  The actual complaint noted that Sweden does not have professional engineer registration.

[230RN]

Dang.  I'd better take that sign off my hall wall that apologizes:

SORRY FOR MY MESSY HOUSE.
  I'M AN ENGINEER, NOT AN
     INTERIOR DECORATOR.

[MikeB]

Engineers are very protective of their title and many locales require anyone calling themselves an "engineer" to be licensed of hold a professional engineering certification.

This is not necessarily the state overreaching, but engineers themselves putting this framework in place to protect their "value".

ETA: often, "professional engineers" take offense at people like me, Revdisk, and others calling ourselves network engineers or security engineers because we don't have a professional accreditation as "engineers". 

Chris

As I recall the term engineer and networks/IT started more or less with Novell and their CNE (Certified Novell Engineer program. There may have been some earlier, but not that I recall. Others started similar certification programs over the years such as MCSE and Cisco Certs and then it became somewhat generic. Colleges back then didn't teach what was going on in the real world if they even do now. And even back then we didn't always trust people with certs. Paper CNE was a well known term for people that passed a test, but couldn't do real work.

[KD5NRH]

Fine every one of those engineers that can't prove his proficiency in train driving.

[Jim147]

Fine every one of those engineers that can't prove his proficiency in train driving.

I can drive just fine it's the stopping part that is hard.

[Hawkmoon]

Engineers are very protective of their title and many locales require anyone calling themselves an "engineer" to be licensed of hold a professional engineering certification.

This is not necessarily the state overreaching, but engineers themselves putting this framework in place to protect their "value".

ETA: often, "professional engineers" take offense at people like me, Revdisk, and others calling ourselves network engineers or security engineers because we don't have a professional accreditation as "engineers".  

Chris

TRue, but for both engineers and for architects (of which I are one), there are "title" statutes and there are "practice" statutes. In my state, for example, architects and engineers have "practice" laws, which means that it's unlawful for anyone to practice engineering (or architecture) in this state unless he/she is licensed as an engineer (or architect). On the other hand, interior designers have a "title" act, which means that nobody can call himself/herself an interior designer unless he/she is registered as such. But anyone can use alternate terms such as "interior decorator," "space planner," "facilities designer," ar anything else and practice interior design under that alternate moniker and be fully legal.

The case in the article sounds like they charged him with "practicing" engineering, and he wasn't practicing engineering. He didn't perform any engineering tasks, and he didn't take any money from any client. He wrote a letter. Maybe he is an engineer. Engineering has many branches that don't require a license to practice. He might be a chemical engineer, for example. Many years ago, I edited a book written by a gentleman who was a glass engineer. His entire working career was spent working for Corning Glass, and he didn't need a license to do that because he didn't have any clients and he didn't perform any engineering work that fell under the purview of the licensing board.

Bureaucratic overreach. This seems to be an attempt by the state to punish a well-meaning citizen for having the temerity to point out a flaw in the infrastructure. No good deed may go unpunished.

It's illegal for someone who is licensed in other states but not in this state to accept clients, take on projects, and perform engineering or architecture for projects located in this state, but if an engineer who is licensed in another state writes a letter, or shows up in a video or an article and says "I'm an engineer," nobody's going to fine him. He's not "practicing," he's just describing himself.

[AmbulanceDriver]

I hate my state........


Censorious, officious, bureaucratic asshats.