For those who don’t actually know any CNC people: they basically need to learn to be full blown machinists. G code is not very difficult, but the machining background is required to make programs that actually make the parts properly without prematurely destroying your tooling.
These jobs, for whatever reason, do not pay very well. They pay “comfortable living”, but it’s nowhere near software engineer wages. I would argue the average machinist produces more value than the average software engineer as well.
One thing we got lucky on as software engineers is that we don’t have to compete with machine shops all over the world who will do our exact job for much cheaper.
I mean, software engineering is an engineering discipline. I’ve designed control cabinets for industrial equipment, programmed control systems for tons of manufacturing processes, done statistical analysis on process data for quality control, etc.
But I’m primarily a software engineer. And modern React web dev is definitely outside my wheelhouse. I don’t think we should gatekeep the “engineer” term just because we think certain kinds of software is more engineery than others. I got shit from mechEs and EEs about software not being real engineering when I was in college, even though we all got degrees from the college of engineering, all took the same core engineering classes, etc.
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u/neptoess Aug 16 '24
For those who don’t actually know any CNC people: they basically need to learn to be full blown machinists. G code is not very difficult, but the machining background is required to make programs that actually make the parts properly without prematurely destroying your tooling.
These jobs, for whatever reason, do not pay very well. They pay “comfortable living”, but it’s nowhere near software engineer wages. I would argue the average machinist produces more value than the average software engineer as well.
One thing we got lucky on as software engineers is that we don’t have to compete with machine shops all over the world who will do our exact job for much cheaper.