Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Being able to understand the business of the customer and create software that helped them do that easier." I don't consider that software 'engineering' necessarily. Yes to be a more useful employee or more successful freelancer etc understanding the business case is absolutely an essential skill. But the 'engineering' begins once the problem has been defined; how do you actually implement the vision.
Defining the problem is a core part of engineering to me.
Imagine it's civil engineering, and we're talking about building a bridge.
To what extend does a bridge engineer need to understand regional trading patterns, and what bridge location and size would give maximum economic benefit?
To me that's a separate discipline to building actual bridges, and no amount of practice with different bridge designs or methodologies is going to be relevant to that, and vice versa.