There was a good series interviewing people that worked in both software engineering and traditional engineering: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/are-we-really

There was a good series interviewing people that worked in both software engineering and traditional engineering: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/are-we-really-engineers/ https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/are-we-really-engineers/. The conclusion was that yes, a lot of what we do as software engineers is engineering.