Early on in the Research Software Engineering movement, people in power in the research software engineering community would give talks and write papers that addressed the question
What is an RSE?
In these presentations, they presented a research software engineer generally as someone that lives on the dimension “between researcher and programmer.” For many of us, we looked at that definition, and then looked at ourselves, and thought I’m not an RSE. The definition left out the true diversity of our community, which includes many different levels of education, background, experience or domain knowledge, and expertise in unexpected areas like front end development, user support, documentation writing, or system administration. This story came about because the leaders of the movement perhaps didn’t have the perspective that the story could be so limited. It’s important to share because, even if those same leaders have changed their mind or now recognize that you can’t make such a statement, the publications and presentations are still out there, and it’s easy to read or watch one and tell yourself this story.
To move forward, initiatives like the RSE Stories Podcast have helped to share actual stories of research software engineers and that they are much more diverse than this early definition offered. What else can we do, and keep working on? This kind of bias still exists strongly with hiring, and our own perceptions of ourselves and others. If we are managers we might proactively try to push aside a related bias that all research software engineers must have PhDs. If we are staff or RSE we might better showcase the more “non traditional” roles that we play. Like many things, dispelling this story will come down to creating awareness that maps to a new reality. Hopefully in the next few years more talks and papers will be written that can better show the diversity in our roles.