In that field, it seems typical to have both engineers and technicians working on projects. Engineers are responsible for design, and have degrees; Technicians do assembly and maintenance, and only need on-the-job training.
I’ve often wondered what our industry would look like if we adopted a similar distinction. In which case, bootcamp graduates would be a natural fit for a technician role.
The difference is that mechanical engineers need math to understand what they are doing. Engineers are essentially applied mathematicians. They are responsible for design because you cannot design without math.
For software development, you don't need math. This may change when data science is taken more serious and companies have to guarantee the quality of the derived knowledge. So it's the other way round. When our industry changes, we will adopt a similar distinction.
Software doesn't need math because testing is enough.
Unlike physical objects, it doesn't cost much to test software, especially because reproduction is almost free. Additionally, with SaaS, software doesn't run unsupervised and thus there is constant testing. In that environment software can almost always be adjusted and reproduced when there are problems.
In that field, it seems typical to have both engineers and technicians working on projects. Engineers are responsible for design, and have degrees; Technicians do assembly and maintenance, and only need on-the-job training.
I’ve often wondered what our industry would look like if we adopted a similar distinction. In which case, bootcamp graduates would be a natural fit for a technician role.