You're mixing up the words engineer and professional.

A professional can still be a mere subordinate who just follows orders.

I don't know why it's so poulpular to conflate the word engineer and developer to the point where simonw decided to drop the most important word "software" and started calling AI assisted software development "agentic engineering" which is the most absurd oxymoron you can come up with.

The person prompting for code is delegating the majority of decision making to the AI. This is the antithesis of engineering. Hence the operator cannot be the "engineer", at best the AI can be the "engineer", if it is smart enough.

The word engineering implies a task with trade offs, guarantees and expectations about the finished product. The vast majority of software isn't important enough to even know what the specifications are or what features it should have ahead of time. You throw something at the wall and see what sticks. "Agentic engineering" just accelerates the process of throwing things onto the market.

Then there is the fact that "engineering" has become a euphemism for software and nothing else. Anything physical is excluded from the start.

Finally "agentic engineering" implies that you're engineering the agent, but you're not doing that either. You're just a user who set up a sandbox and is letting the AI loose.

Engineers are only one type of professional: doctors, lawyers and accountants are also professionals who have obligations to their profession before their obligation to their employer.

The title 'software developer' is correct. We are not engineers and we are not professionals. Pretending otherwise is a grasp for unearned status.