I'm a programmer. I program things. What, specifically, changes pretty frequently still. Going into detail can be useful when trying to score social points from the smalltalk question of "So, what do you do?" But depending on what you program, I think for most people "programming" is sufficient compared to "I currently write software to manage an elastic computer server farm running data analysis jobs for people."
In fact I think the former "programming" can give you more social cred--if you program things the other person can't comprehend an immediate use for, it may hurt you. "Oh you're one of those people that don't do anything useful." If they really want to know, they'll ask, and ask for more details if they care.
Of course, I agree in general that when whoring yourself out to the corporate world it's best to make yourself sound as important as possible as long as possible, which is basically what I got from Patrick's post. "Programmer" doesn't contain enough information to make you seem important enough in BigCo. It's fine for scoring social points.
If you were a carpenter, you wouldn't tell your friends "I hammer things all day", you'd tell them that you make things out of wood. I'd argue that the fact that you spend your day "programming" is more of an implementation detail of the bigger picture that your job is to create software.
In my experience, 'engineer' has closer connotations to janitor than 'programmer'. Certainly in the UK, engineering as a profession has a big image problem because the average person doesn't distinguish between e.g. a heating engineer (who fixes the boiler) and say, a civil engineer (someone with a Masters degree + 4 years professional experience and accreditation).
People I know who are programmers all have professional jobs and by and large are earning more than those I know who are engineers. That's probably not a representative sample of 'programmers' though.
tl;dr: 'engineer' doesn't sound too professional either, at least in the UK. IMO Software Developer sounds better than either, and that's what I tell people I am.
In North America an engineer is either a train operator, someone with a university degree in "Engineering", or a programmer. So you can see the difference.
What you describe as an engineer would probably be called a technician here in the US - somebody with a relatively specialized skill set whose responsibilities are mainly operation or maintenance of equipment or systems.
I think the point is to make your job description less technical, not more. You're not a programmer, you're "the guy who made $X for your company last Y".
Doesn't that depend on what sort of job you're trying to get? If someone is hiring for embedded systems development, and your resume has no details about your technical skills, but lots about Providing Value, there's a good chance they're going to wonder if you're technically qualified. They certainly won't be impressed if your attitude in the interview is: ok, sure, I don't yet know all of these details, but anyone can pick up a language in 3-4 weeks; did I mention I'm really good at creating business value?
That's a good point, it's not just about what you do, the effects matter. But again it fits into the scoring social points game and making yourself look extra important to companies.
It's not just social points, it's access to fulfilling work. The better you do at conveying your unique value, the more likely you are to find someone who's willing to pay you appropriately for work that's right at the edge of your abilities. If you don't market yourself properly you'll be stuck on an HR salary scale (e.g. Programmer III at 105% of standard compensation) doing fungible work.
In fact I think the former "programming" can give you more social cred--if you program things the other person can't comprehend an immediate use for, it may hurt you. "Oh you're one of those people that don't do anything useful." If they really want to know, they'll ask, and ask for more details if they care.
Of course, I agree in general that when whoring yourself out to the corporate world it's best to make yourself sound as important as possible as long as possible, which is basically what I got from Patrick's post. "Programmer" doesn't contain enough information to make you seem important enough in BigCo. It's fine for scoring social points.