I always cringe when people call themselves "engineers" outside the three government-licensed fields: mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineering. In my opinion, if you haven’t gone to school, earned a bachelor’s degree, and passed a government licensing exam to obtain the title of engineer, you have no business calling yourself one.
You’re not a "software engineer"; you’re a software developer. If you’re an engineer, then by that logic, a Starbucks barista could call themselves a "coffee doctor."
Titles like "prompt engineer" or "cybersecurity engineer" seem like attempts to sound more important than they really are.
If every technical skill can be labeled as "engineering," the term loses its significance. Perhaps we should reserve the title of "engineer" for those evaluated and licensed by a governing board.
What do you think? I know this might not be a popular opinion here, but I’m curious—maybe someone else feels the same way.
That said, I am with you, the word is overused. Most developers aren't engineering, they're slapping frameworks together, meeting product deadlines and creating mostly godawful programs. Some of them, very few, do their work with enough rigor and care that they could call what they do engineering.