>And then these people repeat what they have been told are "the best practices".

And then they get jobs which serve to validate their learning paths (maybe not at FAANG), which gives them confidence about what they learned being the right way to do things.

>Proper engineering degree teaches about gathering requirement and analyzing the problem space to understand what really needs to be done.

Well sure, but a lot of non-engineers do that too. Where's the real distinction at?