That's not real engineering mate. That's God Complex rationalizing it's own continuing to do what it's always done while everyone else drops like flies. You'll know Software Engineering has started to turn into real Engineering when programmers/Sys Architects stop being unlicensed roles, and we start getting PE's without whose assent work cannot be started. It'll be real engineering once we've started cutting society so deep, they realize it is not enough to just let anyone build what they want and offer it as load bearing infrastructure.
Once we see that, then we can talk about being Big E Engineering. Until then, it's just people twiddling bits for ethically dubious reasons pretending they aren't violating regulations because they're using computers to do it.