> ... "Software Engineer," as a protected term. You can't just call yourself a software engineer.

In my irrelevant opinion, this is good. To me at least, the word engineer represents someone with a big, heavy responsibility on their hands.

I never liked being called an engineer and only have it on my resume because that's the keyword recruiters search on linkedin nowadays. One reason is that I don't have formal education. The other is that, in almost 15 years of experience, I witnessed very few occasions of software receiving proper care to the extent that I could call it "engineering".