Silicon Valley likes the ego wank of being called engineers.
If it's your job title and you're not working for yourself, then it's likely there's little-to-nothing you can do about. This concerns folks referring to themselves as engineers.
“Software engineering” is a common globally recognized phrase. Anyone overthinking a popular phrase after decades of use doesn’t understand language.
It is as ridiculous as a medical association getting worked up about PhD grads, a rapper, or the author of “Seuss” books being referred to as “doctor” without a medical license.
You can’t regulate global language trends. (Successfully)
Well, yeah. If you're an engineer then call yourself one if you'd like. My comment concerns folks who are not engineers yet refer to themselves as such.
I’ve also found that people external to the tech org love to refer to everyone in the tech org as engineers, regardless of their role, again to likely add prestige or clout to their role. “Our engineers are working on it”, “I’ll review with engineering”, etc.
There's also this, from the article:
>“Professional engineers are held to high professional and ethical standards and work in the public interest,” it said. “The public places a high degree of trust in the profession and these layers of accountability and transparency help keep Canadians safe.”
I cannot agree more. Such standards and concerns are found in a minority of software development roles (critical, risk, etc.); the majority of work in this field does not hold to the same account (which I'm not arguing is a good or bad thing).
Nobody is demanding all software developers be held to the same standards as professional engineers; there is no movement to force everyone wanting to write software be required to go through the same education and development as professional engineers. Again, there are plenty of other, more correct terms to use.
I would like to see a more concerted effort to bring back and/or develop new standards and criteria for genuine engineering in software. People who desire such a career will have something to pursue. Everyone else can continue to being software developers which is fine. Simple.