This is seriously what’s missing from the software field. There is no rigor or responsibility

Hah, my dad (electrical engineer) had the same complaint when I studied sound engineering 😂

As a former civil engineer who now works in software, "software engineer" irks me. "Engineer" means you're supposed to be licensed

This really depends on the country you live in. In some countries you need a license, some need you to have some kind of university degree and others don't care at all. So we cannot really use that measure as a definition.

As a former civil engineer who now works in software, “software engineer” irks me. “Engineer” means you’re supposed to be licensed and you have a responsibility for the public good above your responsibility to your employer.

This. I think some people don't understand that titles are not whimsical status symbols and hold actual legal and regulatory meaning. A random guy can hold an engineering degree and not be an engineer, while a random guy with no degree can actually be a engineer if he jumps through all the hoops.

In engineering fields, being a member of a professional engineering body is critical to work in the field, because the main value proposition of these credentials is to prevent incompetent people from working on critical tasks which can potentially have important consequences to society if they are done poorly. For example, people can die if an engineer signs off on a project for a residential building that collapses due to shoddy work. If that happens then the engineers who signed off on the project will be investigated and if they are held responsible not only can they be held criminally responsible for their work but their license will be pulled, which is society's response to ensure this problem won't happen again.

“Engineer” means you’re supposed to be licensed and you have a responsibility for the public good above your responsibility to your employer.

Good point. We definitely don't, and it's what's causing huge amounts of trouble in the world, rather than using software for the greater good.

But engineer sounds better by some definitions, and it strokes the ego of employees, so companies like to use it to give more prestige to the role.

Just to be clear, that is not exclusive to “engineering,” as other professionals have similar legal requirements (doctors, lawyers, fiduciaries).

More generally, on a personal level, people are expected to act with integrity, and we have laws that provide them legal protections for whistleblowing.

The actual practice of engineering is about problem-solving within a set of constraints. Of course the solution should not harm the public, and there are plenty of circumstances where software is developed to that standard.

When a PE stamps a plan, they are asserting that they personally have reviewed the plan and process that created it and that it meets a standard for acceptable risk (not no risk!). That establishes the boundary of legal liability. In software, we generally do not have that process that fits in a legal framework, but that doesn’t mean that professional software engineers aren’t making those assessments for life-critical systems.

For other kinds of systems, understand that this is a new field and that it doesn’t have the bloody history that got “real engineering” to where it is today. A lot of the work product of most software engineers just don’t have stringent safety requirements, or we don’t understand the risks of certain product categories yet (and before you try to rebut that, remember that “building codes are written in blood” because people were applying technology before it was well-designed/understood).

Anyway, “engineering” is defined by a lot more than if you or your boss has a stamp (and in point of fact, there are plenty of engineers in the US that work as engineers without being a PE, or with any intention of ever having the stamp. Are they real engineers?)