The definition of “software engineer” is SO broad though. If you’re maintaining a database/flight controller/cloud service, etc, you probably need real comp sci knowledge.

Hacking together an internal tool with laravel? Doing vanilla CRUD for a client’s web app? Probably not! No amount of comp sci knowledge will help you configure the millionth nested layer of Wordpress plugins.

So much “software engineering” is just plumbing. Connecting things to other things with a little bit of business logic in between. Honestly my job is plumbing, most of the time.