The problem is that the line is not as clear as you&#x27;d think. Is someone who makes electronic circuits, but is mostly self-taught, an engineer? How about for software? There is usually very little difference between the best self-taught programmers and the best engineering-school taught ones, up an including knowledge of calculus, algorithmic complexity analysis, ML&#x2F;stats, etc. Finally, there are people like me who did a bachelors in CS inside a school of sciences, rather than a school of engineering, is &#x27;Software Engineer&#x27; justified in the later case, but not the former? Why?<p>Also, this discussion is a bit like asking why you can be a Data &quot;Scientist&quot; without a Ph.D. and without peer-reviewed publications. In reality, most people understand the difference between a scientist working in neurobiology or particle physics, and a data scientist working on ads (a competent data scientist working on a private non-profit in epidemiology might actually be harder to classify, though). So, same goes as to the difference between a civil engineer and a software engineer.<p>Edit: If anything, I know a few UX designers that reject the engineer label, but only because it makes the process sound more mechanical compared to designer (in my understanding, both are about discovering <i>and</i> satisfying constrains, but constrains are more strongly defined and more externally enforced in engineering than design, even for software).