So if you have your PE license and are writing software that controls a commercial airplane system or a spacex rocket, you are not an engineer doing software engineering?
From Wikipedia:
"A software engineer is a person who applies the engineering design process to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software."
"The engineering design process, also known as the engineering method, is a common series of steps that engineers use in creating functional products and processes. The process is highly iterative - parts of the process often need to be repeated many times before another can be entered - though the part(s) that get iterated and the number of such cycles in any given project may vary.
It is a decision making process (often iterative) in which the basic sciences, mathematics, and engineering sciences are applied to convert resources optimally to meet a stated objective. Among the fundamental elements of the design process are the establishment of objectives and criteria, synthesis, analysis, construction, testing and evaluation.[1]"
It is not dependent on the problem domain, rather on how the work is performed.
I agree that far too many people call themselves software engineers when they really aren't.
But I just mean to say that software engineering itself is definitely still a real thing and there are many people out there that can and should call themselves software engineers.
"The engineering design process, also known as the engineering method, is a common series of steps that engineers use in creating functional products and processes. The process is highly iterative - parts of the process often need to be repeated many times before another can be entered - though the part(s) that get iterated and the number of such cycles in any given project may vary.
It is a decision making process (often iterative) in which the basic sciences, mathematics, and engineering sciences are applied to convert resources optimally to meet a stated objective. Among the fundamental elements of the design process are the establishment of objectives and criteria, synthesis, analysis, construction, testing and evaluation.[1]"
It is not dependent on the problem domain, rather on how the work is performed.