May I ask why the distinction is so important? If I properly understood your article you are advocating for diligently paying off technical debt. In isolation this is desirable of course, but in practice we have to choose trade-offs with other objectives. As the grandparent wrote, the things people who call themselves "software engineers" actually _do_ are incredibly diverse, both in domain and scope (compare a 3-week POC by two people to a 2-year project by a team of 5). Different situations call for different trade-offs and the actual value you add as an experienced developer is knowing how to balance the various aspects, one of which is technical debt.