Neither software development nor IT work is engineering work and shouldn't be considered one either. I am talking about engineering jobs, jobs that you went to school for 4-5 years in an engineering discipline, not a few weeks bootcamp or made-up program like computer science only to be called an engineer later, diluting the whole industry in the process. So yeah, software development might be boom and bust, engineering is not.
The first civil engineering degree was minted less than 200 years ago even though we've been building civil infrastructure works for millennia. There were plenty of mishaps along the way for that field too.
The creation of the first digital computer is still within living memory. The state of the software industry and its maturity is doing ok given its youth.
