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Oregon Fines Man For Writing a Complaint Email Stating 'I Am An Engineer' (vice.com)
pogopop77 quotes a report from Motherboard: In September 2014, Mats Jarlstrom, an electronics engineer living in Beaverton, Oregon, sent an email to the state's engineering board. The email claimed that yellow traffic lights don't last long enough, which "puts the public at risk." "I would like to present these facts for your review and comments," he wrote. This email resulted not with a meeting, but with a threat from The Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying [stating]: "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, Jarlstrom was officially fined $500 by the state for the crime of "practicing engineering without being registered." Since the engineering board in Oregon said Jarlstrom should not be free to publish or present his ideas about the fast-turning yellow traffic lights, due to his "practice of engineering in Oregon without registration," he and the Institute for Justice sued them in federal court for violating his First Amendment rights. "I'm not practicing engineering, I'm just using basic mathematics and physics, Newtonian laws of motion, to make calculations and talk about what I found," he said. Sam Gedge, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, told Motherboard: "Mats has a clear First Amendment right to talk about anything from taxes to traffic lights. It's an instance of a licensing board trying to suppress speech."
Now if this were a conservative state run by big corporations, you would also have them suing this guy for violating the proprietary intellectual property right of the algorithms used to control yellow lights. See there is no difference between conservatives and liberals. They both want to fuck you in the ass and will use any governmental, corporate monopoly, or legal statute to ensure that your ass is good and fucked. Your government wants to fuck you, Verizon wants to fuck you,
All Gore wants to fuck you. Trump wants to fuck you. HILLARY wants to fuck you. Chipoltle wants to fuck you. CNN , Fox, MSNBC and ABC also want to fuck you. You have a very desirable ass. It is best just to allow yourself to be fucked for the good of society. If you don't you will be labeled a homophobic racist child molesting homosexual terrorist.
Is the imbecile who sent the fine won't be fired.
As if all other First World countries don't have similar professional boards.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Canada neither. You cannot call yourself an engineer in Ontario if you're not a member of the Professiona Engineers of Ontario. It doesn't matter if you have an engineering degree.
Just like you can't practice law or call yourself a lawyer in a province/state without having passed the bar exam even if you've passed law school.
Right. You are NOT a lawyer, but you are free to represent yourself. It is only practicing law if you do things for a client.
You can be an engineer without practicing engineering. You can be a Doctor without practicing medicine. A title doesn't mean anything when it comes to practicing a trade.
You don't need to be an engineer to measure slashdot advertisements now cover a full third of the screen while stories load and now 1/3 of the horizontal space which means the comment density requires much more scrolling.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I'm all for restricting the use of credentials - like 'Doctor', for instance - to people certified by the state to use them. However, that restriction should only come into play when they're using those credentials professionally or to lend authority to a fraudulent claim, which this man was not.
He was speaking the truth, arguably for the public good, and he IS an engineer, just not one registered to work professionally in the state. His background does make his study and its findings somewhat more credible to those incapable of understanding it themselves... but he's RIGHT, so he's not trying to use that title to defraud anyone.
I hope he wins his lawsuit.
I worked in a place with a lot of people who worked in the Engineering dept. These folks designed, revised, worked with the people on the shop floor to resolve problems, etc. None of these folks were "Engineers". They were all referred to as "Engineers". It's just a common term for people who do jobs like that.
We also designed and manufactured a couple of life-critical gadgets - things which might result in a death if they failed. Those drawings had to be signed and stamped by one of our two certified Engineers. But we would have been find into oblivion, I guess, 'cause we referred to just about everyone on that floor as an Engineer.
If he wins the suit, there's nothing to stop people from claiming to be medical doctors and doing all sorts of (more) harm to society.
Just present the facts without claiming to be an engineer.
The thing is, he WAS an engineer, the fine was for practicing in the state without a license, even though that necessitates a transaction of some sort. They basically fined him for stating his education level in an e-mail as an excuse to punish him for disagreeing with them.
He IS an engineer, he is not practicing in the state of Oregon. Practicing is the part that requires registration, so this falls somewhere between a quick cash grab and wanting to shut him up.
If I understand the summary, he's challenging the fine for practicing engineering without registration as he doesn't actually practice engineering.
Perhaps it's not illegal to say "I'm a doctor" as long as you don't then go on to offer a medical opinion or perform a medical procedure?
Sigger than your average
As an industry trained engineer, I've been doing engineering for a few decades. From designing computers and electronics in the 80's to performing and presenting current scientific research, it's just been a part of my life, but previously, I could only refer to myself as an "Amateur Engineer". It's not that I'm not trained, I just wasn't trained in a university. Back in the 80's when I learned to design computers ( as an autodidact ) there simply wasn't a university path open for me as I was in high school at the time, and I was taken in by an R&D lab before I could study further and quickly gained skills and experience beyond what the universities were teaching at the time so never went back to university.
Still, not being able to refer to myself as an engineer caused many problem, especially when registering for government projects or work - where are best I could only call myself a "technician" despite having working in many roles where I was the lead engineer and managed other engineers. It made it pretty difficult finding new work at times also.
Now the Australian government has finally recognized that if you work as an engineer, doing the kind of work that an engineer would normally be expected to do, for a period of five cumulative years, you've proven your point and are recognized not only as an experienced engineer, but as a professional engineer.
Anyone might still be able to claim to be an engineer in Australia, but at least those who have spent years actually doing engineering as a career and were trained on-the-job have finally gained formal recognition as providers of professional services now, whether trained in a university or otherwise. And it's in legislation.
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
In Texas, the Occupation Codes state that you cannot do the math if you are not a Licensed Professional Engineer unless you work for Licensed Professional Engineer (who is responsible for your work), work for the Government (primarily Military or NASA), teach and a few other exceptions. In Texas the licensing started because a person representing themselves as an engineer designed a boiler system for a school that blew up and killed over 100 children back in 1937.
Several textbook fallacies there:
*appeal to accomplishment
*holier than thou
*appeal to ridicule
*ad hominem(s)
All to support censorship based on an allusion to ("think of the children") perceived harm of someone not so ordained into this clergy you mention misinforming the masses by whistleblowing on the system while not having a certain piece of paper stating he has officially been indoctrinated into a certain groupthink category.
Along with "pumping your own damn gas".
"Dammit, Jim, I'm a...
Table-ized A.I.
How is firmware timing of stoplights outside of the realm of an electrical engineer?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Oregon hasn't been controlled by Republicans in 30 years. This is Democrats doing this shit.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The Oregon statute also defines what practicing engineering means under the law. The statutory definition, while overbroad, covers *working* as as engineer, not *saying* you're an engineer.
https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors...
1) "Practice of engineering" or "practice of professional engineering" means doing any of the following: ...
(a) Performing any professional service or creative work requiring engineering education, training and experience.
(b) Applying special knowledge of the mathematical, physical and engineering sciences to such *professional services* or creative work as consultation, investigation, testimony, evaluation, planning, design and services during construction
To any Oregon bureacrats who happen to be reading this:
I'm an engineer. I'm also a train conductor. And a unicorn. Fuck you, Oregon.
Knowing how citizens of the left coast tend to think, they'll decide that the solution to this abuse of an overbroad regulation by power-hungry bureaucrats is to create more regulations, to be wielded by more power-hungry bureacrats.
Agreed, and being licensed as an engineer by some board in Oregon does not make one an engineer. Would be nice to have someone from MIT or Caltech to go and check their licensing requirements, and subject the board to a simple test to see if they know some engineering to begin with
Spotted the Redflex employee!
Uh. What does Trump have to do with this?
This started in 2014 and finished up on 12 January 2017. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but Trump didn't swear in until the 20th.
So the entirety of this sad debacle in the suppression of freedom of speech happened on Obama's watch.
Not that it was necessarily Obama's fault either. But, by your brain-dead "logic" it is...
This is about a collusion between state government agencies to shut someone up who is attempting to alert the public to one or more agencies' shady practices at the expense of said public.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I don't know, he wrote a letter claiming to be an engineer as an authority on a topic. Sounds a lot like hes practising.
So quick cash grab then.
I just read ORS 672.007. Under Oregon law saying "I'm an engineer" counts as "practicing engineering". There is still a first amendment issue.
https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors...
Still, I must say:
I'm the tooth fairy.
I'm an engineer.
I'm a unicorn.
Fuck you, Oregon.
Practicing requires that you be hired or at least offer your services for hire.. He was not and did not.
Twenty years ago in Phoenix, an electrical engineer solved a problem with a freeway interchange that the civil engineers said was impossible and was going to cost the city millions of dollars.
Your entire post is argument from authority. Just because someone has the blessing of some shitty organization of gasbags doesn't say shit about his abilities. If what you said was true, there'd be absolutely no engineering catastrophes on record simply because no one without said blessing is allowed anywhere near anything critical. Of course, we know this is not true.
An engineer is someone who designs machines. If you design machines, you are, or at least have been, an engineer. Someone who's designed lots of high quality machines successfully is a good engineer. One with lots of fuck ups is a bad engineer.
While having a demonstrably good track record is important, paper-driven bureaucratic minds like yours are a plague on society.
Afaik the question is wether he was practicing as an engineer. Offering a medical opinion is part of practicing as a medical doctor. If he claimed to be a pilot and offered an opinion on what he thought the pros and cons of a certain model of aircraft were I wouldn't expect that to be illegal as it isn't part of the role of practicing the profession of piloting an aircraft to offer opinions of the various qualities of different aircraft.
The question I would ask is "Is writing an unsolicited letter to the state engineering board regarding the safety issues resulting from the length of a yellow traffic light considered part of the profession of engineering?"
Sigger than your average
He was probably mistaken to advertise himself as an engineer without further verbal qualifications or disclaimers to a state board. More interesting would be if he stated his education and experience and said that he is specifically not an iOregon registered (mechanical, civil, electrical, etc) engineer.
Public discussion alone of suggestion of errors, principles, calculations and opinions should clearly not be forestalled by such suppressive action. The fine sounds like a power grab in two directions, both over bland use of "engineer" vs "registered engineer", and criticism over the traffic lights. * Certainly if he was licensed and practiced in another state, there would be other Constitutionl issues * Many people have various engineering degrees and work for large organizations with registered discipline engineers carying the stamp * Much of the work is not in highly regulated areas, or simply involves research, operations, administrative and supervisorial duties * Much work goes on in new, evolving areas that would overlap disciplines.
Personally I think a lot of the problems with medicine include too broad licensing laws in was that conflict with discovery and progress by outsiders.
The point is there is regulatory recourse if you are licensed and are found negligent. That is a consumer (and public) safety issue of accountability. It is generally overblown in importance, but something is needed.
"Why didn't he ever register as an engineer, or at least stop going around telling people he's something he is legally not?"
Jarlstrom is an Engineer. What he is not is a "Licensed Engineer", or a "Registered Professional Licensed Engineer", or any combination thereof. As long as he does not claim to be, he is in the clear. Licensing and terminology varies from State to State, and in some Engineering fields, such a Electronics or Software Engineering, is practically unknown. It is most common in Civil Engineering, where a LPE needs to sign off on Public Projects, often in conjunction with a Licensed Professional Architect. They do not have to actually do any Engineering on such Projects. Their Opinion is what is valuable, not their grunt work. In California at least, they don't even have to have an Engineering degree.
We had one LPE on Staff to deal with such things a Regulatory Compliance, and to represent us and our work Legally. He wasn't even our most Senior Engineer; we had dozens of Engineers. His degree was in Physics. I doubt that even 1% of all practicing Engineers nationwide are Licensed.
This is pure Dick Waving by the Oregon Board. What put them up to it is as yet unknown, but I suspect that there is much more to this than a simple difference of opinion regarding what the single word "Engineer" means. Beaverton historically has had a lot of Engineers, practically none of them "Registered" Engineers. Licensing Boards can be good things, as a means of demonstrating competence. Here however, the competence of Mr. Jarlstrom is not in question, nor his work. Just what he calls himself, by their definitions. If he had titled himself "Grand Exalted Red Light Bandit", then his analysis may have actually been considered.
I hope that the "The Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying" gets castrated. They have a right to Trademark any combination of "Oregon" "Registered", Licensed", and "Professional" attached to the word "Engineer", and tattoo it on their Dicks. Until they do so, they are just a bunch of self-absorbed Wankers, grabbing after the Dicks of others.
Have I been sufficiently rude?
Signed,
A "Staff Scientist/Engineer". That is the Job Classification that appeared on my paychecks, paid by this State. No Licensing or Registration "Board" approval required.
This is a travesty*, the shameful, traditional closing ranks of an organization to protect their own. He is lodging a complaint with the board about a potential safety issue. Even if his analysis was entirely without merit it deserves a more respectful response.
For the record: I am a licensed civil engineer (PE). I am no longer a practicing engineer (retired/inactive).
*I do think he should have gotten a note warning him about the legal ramifications of using the term "engineer". Most people don't know it requires licensing. Having a foreign engineering degree means he doesn't have any background with US licensing standards.
Even then it's stupid. Most of the engineers in the world are unlicensed. You only need a couple of PEs in most cases.
Of course these days the term is already worn as thin as kleenex and no stronger than jello. IMHO we (professional engineers) lost all claims of governance over the term "engineer" the day the engineering license boards didn't wage war over "sanitation engineer".
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
Thought experiment. Let's suppose you're a CIVIL engineer -- the type of engineer the regulations are intended to target. You're on vacation in Oregon, and you notice a serious structural fault in a bridge which means that it is in imminent danger of collapse.
Under this interpretation of the term "practice engineering" you wouldn't be able to tell anyone because you're not licensed to practice engineering in Oregon. In fact anyone who found an obvious fault -- say, a crack in the bridge -- would be forbidden to warn people not to use it until it had been looked at.
Which is ridiculous. Having and expressing an opinion, even a professionally informed opinion, isn't "practicing engineering". Practicing engineering means getting paid -- possibly in some form other than money. At the very least it means performing the kind of services for which engineers are normally paid.
A law which prevented people from expressing opinions wouldn't pass constitutional muster unless it was "narrowly tailored to serve a compelling public interest" -- that's the phrase the constitutional lawyers use when talking about laws regulating constitutionally protected activities. In this case the public interest is safety, which would be served by a law which prevented unqualified people from falsely convincing people that a structure was safe. But there is no compelling interest in preventing an engineer from warning the public about something he thinks is dangerous or even improper.
So if the law means what they claim it to mean, it's very likely unconstitutional.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The governor of Oregon is a Democrat. The Democrats control both House and Senate.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
As soon as you grab the knife and fork with the intent to perform surgery, you are practicing.
As for traffic lights, actually there *IS* a conspiracy over the length of yellows in many places, especially where there are cameras. Not big conspiracies, a bunch of little ones.
What about "an architect of a reform"? Do politicians need building design qualifications, too?
Ezekiel 23:20
The engineering board does one thing, they license engineers. That's it, sending them a letter about anything while claiming in the letter to be an engineer is the equivalent of claiming to be any type of registered professional directly to the people that do the registering. It's beyond strange. This is like going before a judge and claiming to be a lawyer, that'll get you jail and a fine.
Does the state even have statutes for electronics and/or computer and/or software engineer? I am or have been assigned the title per an employer for all of the above, with a degree for the first but the locality here only has registrations up to electrical engineering (they got stuck somewhere in the late 40s I guess).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
2 cash grabs. He writes to complain about short yellow traps and ends up falling into the unregistered engineer trap. Well played, Oregon.
Electronics engineering is a valid degree in some non-US countries. I have a degree in it and was by virtue of it allowed to do certain things like program PLCs in a factory or make or repair robot arms.
In the US certification hasn't caught up to the electronics or computer fields or you get a very generic "professional engineer" license even though every help desk jockey gets engineer appended to their job position - not sure how Oregon takes that.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
The 'practising' assumes payment. He wasn't paid, he gave his professional opinion without asking for payment or offering his services as an engineer.
This is a letter from a citizen, who is also en engineer, at least by education, and is not carrying out that trade.
WTF are they doing.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
If you are educated as an engineer and passed all exams, you're an engineer, no matter what a state board says.
But they can regulate the conditions under which you are allowed to practice your trade as an engineer.
Regarding this particular case it's all legal skullduggery in order to shut him up instead of taking his complaint serious.
To me this tells it all. Are you going to help them with that?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Also "engineer" is a very vague term. it covers a wide range of jobs. For instance "software engineer" isn't normally considered an "engineer", but there are also "computer engineers" that sort of straddle the border. I know electrical engineers that probably would never pass the basic engineering license exams in some states because it's been far too long since they had to use the mathematics on the tests.
A licensed civil engineer probably doesn't know much about traffic lights but someone who designs, builds, and maintains traffic lights might not have an engineering license while still being the expert. So why does the licensed engineer get the opportunity to talk about something he doesn't know anything about while the unlicensed engineer is ignored for not having a license?
The licensing can be a bit annoying because of the different states with different rules. An engineering license in one state does not always apply in other states, yet it is a large burden to keep licenses up to date when you move to a new state. So many corporations don't care about licenses when they hire most employees unless the actual job requires it (ie, the employee will be signing off on legal liability about safety).
Let me guess... In order for not having to pay the bill they sued him for practicing civil engineering without proper license?
It's well known that electrical, and especially electronic engineers are able to comprehend very complex problems on average better than other types of engineer, so I'm not surprised that he did it.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
I got my engineering degree (EE) 31 years ago, but legally I'm not an engineer--I'm not a PE. However, my job title states Software Dev Principal Engineer. It's a case of the state of Oregon being ruled by fucktards.
Most states have some protection around advertising yourself as a "Professional Engineer" (PE) or similar term that implies you are licensed by the state to provide engineering services to the public. Only a few states apply this sort of orthodoxy to the general term "engineer", and the enforcement tends to be pretty lax.
Check on LinkedIn, there are several million people listing themselves as some form of Engineer--while most of them have an engineering degree from an accredited university, the vast majority of them do not have any PE licensure, for the simple reason that in many engineering fields there's just no reason get a state license.
Intel is in Oregon--and they employ thousands of degreed engineers and they definitely aren't PEs. Those job postings are advertised as "engineers" and the employees use the term "engineer" on their business cards and LinkedIn profiles.
It didn't handle your mother's meatloaf well, did it?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
He's and EE not a Civil or Mechanical engineer. He's got no business at all using his engineering degree to discuss things way outside the realm of his field. The state was 100% correct and should have fined him in the thousands.
Unless you're a civil rights attorney, you have no business at all using your degree (if you even have one) to discuss free speech. If it's not within your field of study, then you obviously can't know anything about it since civil rights are very technical and specialized and require years of study before you can even utter one word about the topic.
"Why didn't he ever register as an engineer"
For certain kinds of work that fall under "electrical engineer", there is no certification because it cannot be marketed to the public. For example, I do integrated circuit design in processes which require a $10 billion fab to manufacture. No individual is going to have a $10 billion fab laying around looking for electrical engineers to feed it designs. There's is no point to advertising these skill to the public as engineering, so no one bothered to come up with a certification for it.
I am a professional engineer licensed in Oregon. This is very typical for OSBEELS to do. The term "engineer" has very specific legal meaning, and in most states it implies registration and license as a professional engineer. The reason that Oregon and other states vigorously pursue people who claim to be engineers without licensure is to protect the public from those who claim to be engineers but do not have the education or experience to be admitted to the profession. Oregon happens to pursue these types of issues more vigorously than other states I have been licensed in, but this is nothing new. The claim that his first amendment rights are being violated is laughable (but IANAL). He is free to make his case, but he cannot call himself an "engineer" without being licensed.
Kind of sad to take that kind of an attitude. As I mentioned, universities weren't capable of much more than "Heath Kit" lessons of the era - Yes, I did do some study at university prior to getting a job in a lab, even if I never completed a course. Meanwhile, mid-80's I was already building computers from scratch, writing the OS firmware and then finding ways to improve on the architecture of the era.
What exactly do you think I was going to learn at a university that I wasn't expected to already know in the field? The head of department at the university I did briefly attend had already provided me with exemptions in every electronic and computer hardware related unit that was a part of the course. Even they didn't expect me to demonstrate any further proficiency in those areas.
I get that you were trying for a mix of condescending and insulting with your 1 in 10,000 remark, but in reality, anyone who continues working as an engineer for five years in industry, without being fired for being incompetent, has demonstrated they know all of the appropriate calculations necessary to do their job. At that point, it's pretty much 1:1 and the kinds of mistakes that get made are usually the same kind of mistakes that even a uni-trained engineer will make.
Even now, I still have to verify engineering estimates and ensure that they are correct, and it's rare not to find engineering errors in a large project - some big enough to prevent project success.
Being self taught wasn't instead of learning - and if you like the subject, it's never a hard slug. Being self-taught was the price of entry just to get a job in some of those industries in the early days. Learning on the job and being taught on the job both occur from that point on. It's just like university, except the passing mark on a project is 100% or find another job. Or, to para-quote NASA, Failure is not an option.
The Australian government recognized that 5 years of practical on-the-job training is as good as 4 years of university training plus 4 years of on-the-job training. Because it takes 4 years to train someone to the level than an employer will even look at them. So allowing an additional year for a non-graduate engineer to be trained at an accelerated pace is reasonable.
After all, simply having the title "engineer" isn't sufficient - you have to be doing the same work as a graduate engineer would be expected to do. It's not like I got a free ride or anything. Some would regard having to complete the equivalent of four years of university in a single year to be even more onerous.
I'm not the only one either - I've worked with a lot of other non-graduate engineers as well as graduate engineers and they were all at a very high level. It's not uncommon, but maybe you just got a bad batch up in Canada or something.
Here's the qualification requirements;
3.2 Engineering stream
Experienced engineer means a Professional engineer with the undermentioned qualifications engaged in any particular employment where the adequate discharge of any portion of the duties requires qualifications of the employee as (or at least equal to those of) a member of Engineers Australia. The qualifications are as follows:
(a) membership of Engineers Australia;or
(b) having graduated in a four or five year course at a university recognised by Engineers Australia,four years’experience on professional engineering duties since becoming a Qualified engineer;or
(c) not having so graduated,five years of such experience.
Graduate engineer means a person who is the holder of a university degree (four or five year course) recognised by Engineers Australia or is the holder of a degree,diploma or other testamur which:
(d) has been issued by a technical university,an institute of technology,a European technical high school (technische hochschule) or polytechnic or other similar educational establishment;and
(e) is recognised by Engineers Australia as attaining a standard similar to a university degree;
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
Politics have nothing to do with this. This is just plain stupid Americans doing plain stupid American shit.
Getting an engineering degree over here (Central Europe) means that it becomes part of my name. It is written in my driving license/ID card/passport/... in the field "Name". Some people also use it when introducing themselves such as "Hi, my name is engineer John Smith" (thought it is becoming less frequent nowadays). Now if I come over to Oregon, and do that or present my passport, I can be fined?
Well there are more reasons for that hope. Contrary to what so many people believe - being president is nothing like heading a company, and being good at one does not suggest you'll be good at the other, indeed the two jobs are almost exact opposites in the skills they require. I'll run through the differences just now - but it's worth noting that the republicans don't seem to recognize the importance of those differences and keep running businessmen for president. 3 of their last 5 candidates were businessmen - and to add injury to insult, they aren't aren't even good at picking businessmen since only one of the three Mitt Romney could be called a successful businessman.
Why being president is nothing like running a company: ... we're not his customers, we are his BOSSES.
- A business owner is risking his own money, the president is managing OUR money
- A business owner has customers, the president does not - those people out there using government services, paying taxes,
- A business owner has near absolute power over business decisions. A president is limited by checks and balances including congress and the courts.
- A business owner can make decisions single-handedly about things like spending and budget priorities, a president gets no real say in that - Congress writes the budget. He can tell them what he would like, but they have no obligation to care. If a CEO and his accountant do not agree on which departments should get budget priority, there is very little risk of the entire company shutting down for weeks - this has happened to government more than once.
- A business owner competes with his rivals in the market, but they take great care not to let each other know their plans and desires. A president has his competition INSIDE THE SAME ORGANISATION and has to negotiate with them on things they don't agree with - giving them some of what they want in return for some of what he wants and cooperate with them on things that they agree on and sometimes just ignore all their beliefs to do the basic jobs of governance together.
- If a business reduces it's expenses, there is almost zero risk of reducing it's income through the exact same action - this is almost ALWAYS the outcome when a government cuts expenses (because a government's income comes from taxing other people's income and government expenses ARE other people's income, and the income of a bunch of people who have never done business with government is reduced too - because the people who do business with government cannot buy as much from them anymore). As a general rule, austerity (especially in a recession) is the economic equivalent of saving money on your heating bill by burning your paycheck for warmth.
I could go on and on but I think I've made my point, frankly what I find myself entirely incapable of doing - is finding a SINGLE thing the two jobs actually have in common - a single overlapping skill between them. A good janitor is MORE qualified to president than the CEO of the company he cleans for - because a good janitor is good at understanding and executing the wishes of his superiors- and the president has a LOT of superiors, 320 million of them in fact.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
There is one key difference between his example and yours.
Who is the GP discussing free speech with? A random on the internet?
Oregon would not fine someone who was just discussing things among others, even peers. What he did do was an analysis which was sent to the owner of the specific problem.
It's the difference between our discussion here, and walking into the court house and discussing it to the judge during the hearing. Would your free speech protect you there?
Back in the Sixties, my California employer opened a new operation in another state where it was the first major aerospace activity. A press announcement said it would bring several hundred engineers to town, and the local engineering society made pretty much the same complaint as in TFA.
We sent them a letter saying "Sorry, we don't want to infringe on the law here. Would you please send us 300 membership application forms, 300 copies of the sample P.E. exam, and the schedule for your next officer election?"
Never heard back.
At 500$ it really isn't a cash grab so much as it is a middle finger and telling him to fsck off.
Canada and several European countries. Canada is prominent because they fined Microsoft repeatedly for handing out MCSE certifications to people who aren't Engineers.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
>locality here only has registrations up to electrical engineering
Take a look at the subjects. It's all power distribution and 3 phase stuff. The electronics I do is all around 0.8V these days.
To get a professional license to do engineering in microelectronics would require that you study heavy duty power electronics.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Yes, you would be illegal. It's the same in my province and they actually enforce it.
Big lawyers? Microsoft also had big lawyers and they lost.
https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/media...
They updated their web site and now use the term Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE) instead of Engineer.
https://www.microsoft.com/fr-c...
Frankly, for using his job to create the false impression he's an authority on something completely unrelated - he deserves what he gets.
I have the degrees and pay stubs to prove it.
According to Oregon your degrees don't mean jack shit unless you qualified and registered as an engineer in the state of Oregon.
First things first: I'm an Eur Ing certified Engineer (practicing and whatever) and hope that people become more conscious about what the fuss is about.
* Society does not (and should not) grant exclusive professional titles and rights for fun, it does so because it protects citizens' life(-state) and property.
I guess we would all hope society continues to do so: Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers are meant to help human life.
1)
In this particular case, there is no much struggle to consider that this gentleman comes with a case worthy of discussion and he should be heard.
If he is registered engineer or not, that's irrelevant per se. The technical case needs to be discussed regardless and I personally believe/bet he has a point.
2)
Furthermore, under certain circumstances he could be qualified to be called Engineer - it seems not so in Oregon - and the following is to be examined:
https://www.usaopps.com/govern...
In that, you may observe that an Oregon address is used as base for "Engineering Services", under his name; oops, that _may_ be regulated!
It IS his responsibility to ensure that he is complying with the local law - there is simply no excuse for that, if he is advertising engineering services.
fi. building code changes from place to place, there is no excuse for not adhering to it!
3)
This is obviously a "negotiation" that went out of hand from both sides;
the language below appears appropriate and respectful -not abnormal of a regulatory authority- however between the lines there is some confrontation:
https://lintvkoin.files.wordpr...
Hey, that's not how to build bridges - pun intended!
The case also highlights that the engineering community could benefit from some norms about how to solicit feedback from both licensed engineers and the wider public, and be held accountable, if there are omissions; there will be something to learn out of all this process.
fi. regular car drivers have plenty to confess about near-misses, which COULD and SHOULD shape the opinions within formal traffic engineering bodies.
The discussion is going to be interesting and it's great this takes publicity, because it will force some healthy debate.
So, let's not be too quick to circumvent the lawyers and judges, they are specialists under a protected profession, exactly for that kind of thing ;-)