[munchbunny]

I don't think the exercise of drawing the line between "engineering" and "not engineering" is a useful one here. The actual decisions and the pressure to perform for the job crosses disciplines up at the top of the management hierarchy.

The broader point is that in most companies engineering decisions don't come purely from the engineering department. They are often decisions made as part of bigger projects or efforts. For example, it's probably not up to engineers in most companies whether the any of the tech giants sell to the military. If it is, it's up to people who were engineers at some point and might still exist up at the top of the "product" part of the company, but who for all intents and purposes stopped writing any code or even managing anyone who writes code a long, long time ago.