Back when Novell began calling their certified technicians Netware Engineers there was a similar brouhaha from the college graduate type engineers.
No one owns the word and it has no legally restricted meaning and so anyone who wants can use it. Same with chef.
It boils down to if they can do what you need them to do regardless of title.
On the other side of equation, technical writer had/has a somewhat negative connotation because of a bunch of hack work some technical writers had performed. Many wanted to reinvent their title as if that would solve the problem of someone doing shoddy work. But it's still the same work and there's good people to be had from among the incompetent.
References are worth a lot.
Phil |