Somewhat
They are licensed, have specific educational requirements, and are subject to legal issues when their designs fail. In almost all cases, their work is reviewed by at least 1 other person, if not dozens. They rarely are the guys actually putting the stuff together (they do prototypes), and their might be production facilities and other aspects of their job, dealing with many people who can call them on their work when it doesn't look right.
And in their case, they have exact mathematical formulas to guide what they build, and catalogs of off the shelf parts (like program libraries, but the specs on those parts are far better than the specs on a 3rd party library), and someone else can say if their design won't hold up based on weight or other factors.
Nope. Yes, conceptually they start out near, but they veer off. I can assume that a licensed experienced engineer can take on a particular type of project, and if he screws it up, it's going to cost him a lot. He does not have the freedom to invent the way a programmer does, he has real world constraints. Programmers can have whatever they can envision, and if envisioned right, the only constraint is the cost of the next server when scaling, which is trivial and pays for itself when needed.
I didn't say greatly affects their reality. I said invents.
