You missed the point. Of course science is a big part of engineering. Of course Mechanical Engineers study the academic theories before they get into practical applications. But my point stands: Would you hire a team of Materials Scientists to build a bridge, or would you want Engineers?

What I pointed out is the problem of focusing on academic science, over the practical application in building things in the real world, that are commercially viable.

For what it is worth, I have degrees in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, among others. One of the projects I led involved over 800 developers at Boeing building the software that connected 700 vendors and got all the right parts to the right places to build 747s. I also did the settlement engine for the NASD stock exchange and have done a lot of work at Oracle. These days I do Deep Learning computer vision software.

So yeah, my experience is only with ‘simple’ software.

Perhaps you should study a little history, as Larry Ellison (hint hint: he invented Oracle) said "If I had followed the way Computer Science teaches to do things, I would never have invented a new kind of database."

Computer Science has its place, just as Materials Science does… which is mainly in research. If you want to do research, which Google and Apple very much do, then that is the kind of resource you need. However, if what you are doing is building commercial products, you should hire Engineers.

Today, as a CEO of a rapidly growing AI company, my advice to people wanting to get into the software business is that we have too many Researchers, and not enough Engineers. Focus on learning practical problem solving over (but not to the total exclusion of) academic theory. Perhaps more importantly, remember the most basic principle of all Science: It is just a theory, and you should be trying to prove it wrong.