This is so true and sad. Often the smartest people at a company are literally just being moved about by the business people. They literally can't see the real game above them.
Ah no, I am not saying California is up to this, but the rest of the US definitely is. I am from VA and can assure you that people would not be comfortable giving money equally to say, sex offenders or black people, as their WASP neighbor here. California is not like the rest of the US at all, so I withhold my opinion on what could pass there.
There is no hope of something like this passing in the US. If it doesn't disenfranchise at least a few hated social groups its flat out un-American and the people won't stand for it. Fuck over felons, recent immigrants, black people, or someone like this and you might have a chance of getting it through. I'll grant you that California is its own weird little world, so yeah maybe its possible there, but for sure this won't fly in the US.
I get your point about how people end up doing engineering jobs sans PE certificate, but I would still stick to the position that people without certifications are in fact, not engineers. Maybe they are doing the work, but paralegals who failed the bar aren't lawyers, even if they went to law school, they're paralegals (or whatever lesser title applies). You don't get to be an engineer because you passed a degree program, or got someone to hire you with such a title. You have to demonstrate an objective mastery of a large body of knowledge, etc. This is what the PE actually tests for. This is different than in tech, where getting a degree or a job actually does make you a software engineer. There is no standard exam to pass or anything. Just get any random hiring manager to hire you and you're a software engineer.
My first dev job saw this fad come through the department one season. It went from "Here's your feature for this week, please implement it" to "Here's your feature for this week, you're the leader for development on this! Please implement it.". I understand that middle management has basically nothing to actually do, so it invents shit like this, but it pisses us off that actually do something to have this weird changing layer of bullshit smeared over what is a feature factory job. You can't shine shit with buzz words.
This article glosses over the fact, known to us who have witnessed humans up close in business environments, that success is almost entirely political within an organization.
I think there is more to it than process. I'm not an engineer, but I know in the US you usually have to pass the PE exam to be a real certified engineer, plus there is the reality that if your bridge collapses, you are liable, might go to jail, etc. I'm unaware of any similar licensing process in software engineering or liability realities. Even when software kills people, it is usually not prosecuted and the devs are not held to the same standards as licensed engineers. For this reason, I just tell people I'm a dev, not an engineer.