alt Hacker NewsOh man, I have gone off on rants about software "engineering" here in the past.
My first office job was as an AutoCAD/network admin at a large Civil and Structural engineering firm. I saw how seriously real engineering is taken.
When I brought up your argument to my FAANG employed sibling, he said "well, what would it take to be a real software engineer in your mind!??"
My response was, and always will be: "When there is a path to a software Professional Engineer stamp, with the engineer's name on it, which carries legal liability for gross negligence, then I will call them Software Engineers."
People like to make this point, but traditional engineering has the opposite problem: insanely overwrought processes and box-checking that exists for no reason and slows everything down to a snail's pace. Yes there are safety-critical parts, but they surrounded by a ton of bullshit.
It's also absurd to think that there is no company which does genuine software "engineering". If you break ads at Google/Meta, streaming at Netflix, etc there are massive consequences. They are heavily incentivized to properly engineer their systems.
The main thing that governs whether time is spent to well-engineer something is if there is incentive to do it. In traditional engineering that incentive is the law (Getting council approval, not getting sued, etc). In software engineering that incentive is revenue.