@thirstybear @borisschapira @samir You can do it if you like, and I got one job on the basis of the C Eng - the technical director said that the only thing between me and the other candidate was that I had it and the other didn't.

But whilst some employers are happy to hire self-taught "coders" to hack stuff together any old how the market for qualified professional software engineers will be limited to those shops who, voluntarily, actually want to do things properly.

It's not like some other disciplines, or some other countries, where to call yourself "engineer", and/or to do a particular job, you need to have the qualifications and regulation. So at that level it indeed hasn't caught on.