One more thought - I am not sure we want to go down this route, but organizing into professional trade organizations (I hesitate to call it a union) could provide for &quot;licensed&#x2F;certified&quot; software engineers&#x2F;etc. to help distinguish.<p>I know we have plenty of professional certifications, but I don&#x27;t know of one as general as this which exists yet and has any true merit.  I think the IEEE was working on something like this.