I think you misunderstood him, as others have noted, however I do agree that Software Engineers tend to diminish their own skillset as not "engineery" enough. And I have a very hard time understanding why.

I work with many kinds of engineers, every day, from electrical to mechanical, and I do not find their way of working any more advanced than what I have become used to from disciplines of Software Engineering.

I look at some of their math and think magic. They look at my code and think magic. However, anything else seems pretty much the same. We do iterative development, they do iterative development, although less sophisticated and with much longer feedback loops, so they have higher incentives to get designs right the first time - but that does not mean that they always do!