Actually it's not even years of experience, I've seen grads with 2 yrs experience promoted to Senior with a minor raise because otherwise they might leave the company.
Licensed professionals don't have identity crises, their titles and what is required of them is legally enforced. The software industry has never lobbied for the interests of "engineers", the way other professions have (taxi drivers, barbers, plumbers, real estate agents, etc formed professional groups which lobbied for laws requiring official licensing). I think it's because software developers are the laziest people on the planet, and they are happy to continue doing almost nothing in order to get hired.
Licensing never happened because its effect is to reduce the size of the labor pool and restrict what the labor pool can do as individuals. Barring the very recent abberation of the glut of new grads and not enough junior positions, even without licensing, there haven't been enough engineers to fill all the open senior-level positions. Licensure would make that problem worse.
A licensure board would also get embroiled in political disputes over what is genuinely ethical. Python is a performance nightmare, should engineers be permitted to pick a language with known poor performance characteristics? Electron is a RAM hog and battery-killer, is it an ethical choice? So how could any Python or Electron shop support licensure?
> there haven't been enough engineers to fill all the open senior-level positions. Licensure would make that problem worse
The point of the licensing is to make sure they can do the job; hiring people without the licensing means you're hiring amateurs. It's not a good solution. You need more job-training programs to fix the existing lack of engineers, which still works with licensing. There's no quick fix for a lack of qualified expertise, other than H1-B's.
Sure a board can make things more complicated, but it's because they're trying to improve things. This is a positive.
> should engineers be permitted to pick a language with known poor performance characteristics?
In electrical work, you are restricted to what parts you can use for what work, based on its application/use-case. If it's touching a house or grid it needs to be UL-listed (mandatory testing). If it's outdoor it needs to be NEMA-3 (weather-resistant) or better. If it's direct burial it needs to be UF-B (resists common outdoor issues) or better. More than 3 conductors in a raceway requires derating the condutors. You can't join dissimilar metals (aluminum, copper) without some kind of tin-plated splicer (with oxidation treatment) to prevent corrosion.
I'm sure when these standards were introduced, electricians were annoyed that they were "being limited in choice". Today we take it for granted. Our safety and stability, both as individuals and as a society, is more important than the personal preferences of engineers.
A comp-sci degree is mostly theoretical and academic. Professional licensing (that usually requires apprenticeship) is about hands-on experience, which is what all comp-sci grads lack. It's why grads get paid next to nothing; a grad is essentially an apprentice.
Licensed professionals don't have identity crises, their titles and what is required of them is legally enforced. The software industry has never lobbied for the interests of "engineers", the way other professions have (taxi drivers, barbers, plumbers, real estate agents, etc formed professional groups which lobbied for laws requiring official licensing). I think it's because software developers are the laziest people on the planet, and they are happy to continue doing almost nothing in order to get hired.