I did a lot of different things in my career... I definitely saw engineering or at least saw something that was a gateway to engineering, but the challenge was

I did a lot of different things in my career... I definitely saw engineering or at least saw something that was a gateway to engineering, but the challenge was that the vast majority of organizations had incentives that went another direction. Meaning, for most the cost and time to engage in any kind of disciplined behaviors was beyond what they were willing to do. Of course, the argument can be made that if they followed engineering practices it might have saved them time and money, but by and large companies don't have the knowledge to do things differently. You could argue that's why they hire software engineers - to show them how to do it right - but my own experiences were that most companies can't get out of their own way. So, sure - there could be such a thing as software engineering, we could all be software engineers, but in most places we just hack along as programmers trying to hold it together with spit and baling wire.