Professional licensing - Was: Is there anything we can do as a group about SCO ?

[Vaughn Treude]

On Sunday 25 May 2003 04:16, you wrote:
> >Message: 7
>
> From: Vaughn Treude <vltreude@deru.com>
>
> >Organization: Nakota Software, Inc.
> >Subject: Professional licensing - Was: Is there anything we can
>
> do as a group about SCO ?
>
> >Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 07:58:44 -0400
> >
> >I'm in the IEEE and several (but by no means all) of the
> >members of our group have PE certification.  I'm not against
> >it if it's a voluntary thing, something you do to get a "PE"
> >after your name.  Here in Arizona it's pretty much that way,
> >but in other states - noticeably California - it's pretty
> >difficult to practice at all without it.
>
> What are you talking about?  It's difficult to be an engineer in
> CA without a PE?  I don't buy that for a second.  There's no way
> all the engineers working at Intel, AMD, Sun Microsystems, SGI,
> Qualcomm, and the countless other tech companies in California
> (esp. Silicon Valley) have PE certification.
>
<snip snip>

Daniel,
Good point.  I neglected that detail.  There's a point of law in most states 
called the "industrial exemption."  That means if you work for a big company 
(that presumably has licensed engineers somewhere in its ranks) that the P.E. 
is not required.  New Jersey tried to revoke this a few years back and 
require all engineers to get licensed.  AT&T threatened to pull its 
operations out of the state, and New Jersey backed down.  The industrial 
exemption could also be applied to those big "body shop" consulting firms; 
again because there are probably P.E.'s somewhere in the ranks.

What I'm saying is that if you , as an individual, go into a consulting 
practice, and "offer engineering services to the public" (you would think 
this means individuals, but it also includes companies) you are supposed to 
be licensed.  In many places, such as Arizona, you can get around that easily 
by scrupulously avoiding using the word "engineer" in your company name or 
literature.   But not all states are that lenient  (a colleague of mine 
claimed that California became strict because they lost so much revenue to 
Proposition 13, and had to make up the shortfall somehow.)  There's 
unfortunately no guarantee that Arizona will continue its current  policy; at 
any time they could say, "the service you are providing is actually 
engineering," much as they sometimes do with people who provide 
health-related services.  For example, there used to be an organization (or 
was it a company?) called Silva Mind Control, that taught people 
self-hypnosis so that they could better achieve their goals, not just weight 
loss or quitting smoking but general success in life.  It was banned by state 
medical boards who claimed that any sort of hypnosis (except for the 
stage-magician variety) was regulated as a psychiatric service.  Yet Silva's 
people never claimed to be M.D.'s, and I don't think they used the word 
"doctor" or "medical" to describe themselves.

Of course, I'd rather see all licensing boards be privatized (made into 
independent, non-tax-supported entities) and all certification be voluntary, 
providing you don't commit fraud by claiming a certification you don't have.  
This is unlikely as long as so many professionals (especially doctors and 
lawyers) buy into the myth that licensing is enacted for consumer protection. 
There's an organization called the Institute for Justice (www.ij.org) that 
has started to fight these scams (they overturned regulation of casket sales 
in Tennessee) but I don't think they've gotten into the engineering services 
area at all yet.

Anyway, its cool to see the controversy this topic has provoked.  Maybe 
there's hope for change after all.

Vaughn