To be sure, today’s Cloud-connected tools still rely on infrastructures, especially the physical servers and networks that handle millions of users accessing billions of files. But those activities have largely been outsourced to infrastructure giants.

Likewise, integrations with messaging, financials, and storage have been abstracted such that individual software developers can treat them as black boxes. That sometimes allows software to run better and more reliably, but it also allows developers to avoid interfacing with the messy world outside their co-working spaces.

As a result, software development has become institutionally hermetic. And that’s the opposite of what “engineering” ought to mean: a collaboration with the world, rather than a separate domain bent on overtaking it.

* * *

The traditional disciplines of engineering—civil, mechanical, aerospace, chemical, electrical, environmental—are civic professions as much as technical ones. Engineers orchestrate the erection of bridges and buildings; they design vehicles and heavy machinery; they invent and realize the energy systems that drive this equipment; and they contrive methods for connecting all of these systems together.

It’s no accident that the most truly engineered of software-engineering projects extend well beyond the computer. Autonomous-vehicle design offers the most obvious contemporary example. When Google designs self-driving cars, it musters its own computational systems, like mapping and navigation. But it also integrates those into a world much larger than browsers and smartphones and data centers. Autonomous vehicles share the roads with human-driven cars, pedestrians, and bicyclists. Those roads are managed, maintained, and regulated. Self-driving cars also interface with federal motor-vehicle standards and regulations, along with all the other material demands and foibles of a machine made of metal and plastic and rubber rather than bits. Engineering addresses complex, large-scale systems.

This is why it is so infuriating when Uber insists that it is just a technology platform, and thus not subject to the oversight of transportation-services regulation. Love or hate it, Uber is not just an app developer—it’s a car-service network activated by software, and thus subject to public interest and oversight. And no matter what Uber says, the company still advertises careers in “engineering, design, and product” categories on its website. Engineering roles are illustrated by a bearded guy staring at source code on two monitors.

Uber Screenshot

Other engineering disciplines are subject to certification and licensure. If you’ve ever hired a civil, structural, or hydraulic engineer for a construction or repair project, that individual probably had to be certified as a Professional Engineer (PE). Licensing processes vary by state, but Professional Engineers generally need to hold a 4-year degree from an accredited program in their discipline, pass one or more exams, and possess 4 or more years of professional experience under the supervision of a licensed engineer. Not all working engineers are or need to be Professional Engineers, but to open an engineering consulting practice or to claim that one is an “engineer” in a formal context, licensure is usually required. It’s in the state’s interest to ensure that someone claiming to be an engineer (or an architect a surveyor or a cosmetologist or a massage therapist) isn’t just making up his or her qualifications.