It depends on the country/state/laws/industry/field etc. In the UK, everyone is an engineer. The guy who checks your gas meter readings is a "gas engineer". In the US, I think it's "professional engineer" that is the protected term (depends on the state I'm guessing).
I used to work in the semiconductor industry, no one gave a shit about licensing, but I would still call it "real engineering".
Going to jail isn't a prerequisite for something being an engineering discipline. I think software can be "engineering", depending on the process used to develop it. But the "move fast and break stuff" philosophy is pretty anti-engineering, in my opinion.
This becomes almost a philosophical discussion about what engineering entails and the definition of words. Personally, I don't care that much if people call themselves engineers or consider what they are doing engineering. Even if all they do is copy-paste code from SO to glue together npm libraries.
I used to work in the semiconductor industry, no one gave a shit about licensing, but I would still call it "real engineering".
Going to jail isn't a prerequisite for something being an engineering discipline. I think software can be "engineering", depending on the process used to develop it. But the "move fast and break stuff" philosophy is pretty anti-engineering, in my opinion.
This becomes almost a philosophical discussion about what engineering entails and the definition of words. Personally, I don't care that much if people call themselves engineers or consider what they are doing engineering. Even if all they do is copy-paste code from SO to glue together npm libraries.