HN user
Why do you need to quit to accomplish your goals? Sounds like you're already coasting through a bad experience. It's a much more compelling narrative to switch jobs than to quit one and find another while unemployed.
The dictionary definition seems to answer this clearly for me.
Engineer - A person who, given a problem and a specific set of goals and constraints, finds a technical solution to the problem that satisfies those goals within those constraints. The goals and constraints may be technical, social, or business related.
The distinction between "computer scientist" and "software engineer" is a much more interesting one, that between developer/programmer and "software engineer" (which feels like a variation of degrees).
The best investment I've made has been quitting a well-paid, big company job to work for an early Rails software startup.
I worked many more hours and was paid less money (the investment).
I had an amazing time, learned very valuable skills, and am in a much better place in my career because of it.
This will continue paying dividends in salary and enjoying my work for the rest of my life.
Boston/Cambridge - PatientsLikeMe - Rails Engineer
PatientsLikeMe provides medical insights for people with life-changing, chronic illness using complex data analysis and visualizations. More info here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMSGP2ONfBc
Work with brilliant people to solve hard problems in a startup big enough to be stable, but small enough to give you a huge amount of freedom. Latest Rails technologies, 20% time in one-week blocks, remote/work-at-home days standard.
http://www.patientslikeme.com/about/careers/1-experienced-ru...
This seems to be political opinion masquerading as analysis.