I think "prompt engineer" is the best job title on multiple levels

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Employed

My boss once referred to me as “code bastard”. I’m keeping it.

"resource"

Ummm, keyboard jockey??? Code monkey??? can we get some respect here?

I know a guy who just says he stacks shelves at Tesco as he cannot be bothred to explain 😂

Button pusher

You may call me Computer God. Or God for short if i deem it acceptable.

A load of the devs at my original dotnet shop are still there, but are now called stuff like “Vice President Regional Director Lord Protector Master Technical Architect”. I suspect they’re all still writing VB.

I usually say "I'm a computer toucher" or "computer programmer" if I don't want to talk about what I do. If I want to flex some nerd cred, and/or boast a little, I'll usually say "I work with machine automation" or "robotics". It tends to get a more curious response and I can talk about some of the weird stuff I've helped make.

I have rotated between countless titles over several decades. What I do hasn't really changed. Currently I'm not even aware what my official title is and when someone asks I usually say something along the lines of I make IT go but in my native language.

I would prefer that I was not referred to at all. Especially if you are a PM.

CopyPaster

"Software craftsman"

I like Computer Programmer. No mistaking it. Developers are people who organise houses to be built. Engineers work on trains. Coders encrypt data. No matter what nonsense word salad it says on my email signature, when I'm at a barbecue I say I'm a computer programmer.

Consultant

I hear the voice of the machine spirit!

I only want to be called darling. Or a filthy worm, depending on the situation

It depends who I'm talking to and where I live. Where I live, engineer is a protected title and requires certification/etc so that takes it out of the race. That leaves the other options. Generally I am a Web Developer to people my age or younger, to people older than me I am usually a Computer Programmer but also sometimes a Developer or Software Developer instead. Realistically, I am a Full Stack Website Developer.

Referring to my job doesn't get any easier even as someone in tech.

I like to call myself a codemonkey

If they have a degree in engineering, then they are an engineer.

I have always considered myself an engineer because I’m part of a multidisciplinary engineering organization designing a physical product that has embedded software. And “engineer” is the word at the end of my degrees, I guess.

But if somebody called me by any of those terms in the OP I would answer. And if somebody who works on an app or a video game calls themselves an engineer, it wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

My only conclusion is that we here, who spend our days specifying exactly what we want computers to do, are not so great specifying ourselves exactly.

At some jobs, I can get away with "Señor Developer" or "Computer Toucher". Those are the nice ones.

Otherwise it tends to be "Senior Software Engineer" that carries the least constricting baggage.

I SWEAR big company middle managers hear "developer" and they can only ever see you as an infant who without guidance would just keep coding some absolute random shit and not think about product, market, customers, integration, or prioritize their own work.

If you push tickets - software developer at best.

If you iteratively solve problems by learning, building models, and trying hard to break said models until a sufficiently robust one remains - welcome to engineering.

When people ask me what I do for a living I tell them that I furiously bang on a keyboard until the computer does what I want.

Idc, just please don't call me a coder, it makes me sound like I'm a script kiddy.

Remember when they tried to make ninja, Rockstar, and guru a thing?