> there would be standards which we seem to lack / fail to enforce

This is by design. Software developers are hardly "engineers". They build what the business wants, quickly, and worry about the "properly" after product-market fit is found (or so they're told). This dynamic would be upended if software engineering were licensed.

Relatively few engineers in the US are licensed. It's fairly common with civil engineering because at least moderately senior engineers are signing off on drawings for regulators. But mechanical/chemical/etc. engineers are not in general licensed overall--maybe 10-20% are the numbers I've seen.

And that's not even counting all the jobs like sales engineer, mud engineer (oil business), etc. that are really more engineering-adjacent jobs (if that).

When I took the engineer in training exam--never had a reason to follow through on a PE, it basically required things like a four-year engineering degree, working under someone for some number of years, passing the PE exam, and presumably signing code of ethics, etc. For certain jobs, it is pretty much a requirement past some level but mostly doesn't matter a lot.

I can’t even convince design not to make the text grey on grey. It’s not just “disabled” users who are suffering this nonsense.

I get paid the same not to fight. More even, because I’m a team player.

The way this gets fixed in an org isn't by engineers winning fights with designers.

It's by someone at a higher level deciding that they care about accessibility (or that they care about not getting sued), and introducing constraints which their designers and engineers must work within, and making compliance with the constraints part of the QA process.

The way it gets fixed across organizations is government regulation

> worry about the "properly" after product-market fit is found (or so they're told).

Thankfully for Reddit they found the product market fit 10 years ago.

They're just a bad software company.

This is why I found it hilarious when people say they prefer proprietary software because a commercial company will produce better code than volunteer individuals.

Train drivers are also called engineers, and much software development can be seen as engineering in this general sense.

If the product owner directs work at a ticket level and never assigns it to anyone, it's their fault it isn't there. If the engineers have more autonomy than I've seen at a company are were able to decide what to work on, then sure blame the engineers.

It's on product, because it's an ask from the customer (and requires planning into the roadmap - it doesn't come for free).