1) I don't include information technology (IT) in traditional engineering. Heaven knows too much IT is built on a lot of people just 'learning products' and 'vendor alignment' instead of underlying technology and innovation. IT for IT's sake is one of my biggest, pet peeves going back to the .COM boom-bust, but still lives on today.
2) In the Soviet, the highest end-all, be-all, respected profession was the engineer, who was a pure applied science student, without business, economics and humanities, and a disregard for spirituality too. Those were considered 'wasteful distractions,' hence why communism -- the pure ideology -- can be considered the pure pursuit of science and progress. So it appealed to their engineers, who were often, also in positions of leadership and even politics, as it was the highest regarded profession in the Soviet.
It's kinda amazing how we're seeing #2 grip the US now, only instead of the engineer -- largely because western/capitalist engineers get economics and other business -- it's the liberal arts major along with other intellectuals. We're headed back to the Soviet view of the world, no religion as it's hurtful, no economics as it is demeaning, the large, centrally planning state controls all and knows best.