I recently visited Berlin to research about the German Freelance Visa [1] after being rejected by multiple local startups that were looking for Software Engineers with +3 years of work experience. I asked for feedback to one of them and was told that I should not consider myself an "engineer" because I don't have an university degree in the field, even with +9 years of work experience. I asked more people about the topic and most of them agreed that I should call myself a Software Developer instead since I am self-taught. What do you think about it?
EDIT: To add a bit more, I don't mind the title, you always end up doing more or less the same things, many companies love the titles though. Some of my friends have titles like "Lead Developer", "Senior Software Engineer", "CTO", "Back-End Developer", etc and they all do pretty much the same thing that I do, so I don't see the point on nitpicking my resume. I will surely take the advice and start calling myself a "Software Developer" instead of "Software Engineer" because I agree that calling myself an engineer without a formal education is misleading.
EDIT: To add a bit more, I don't mind the title, you always end up doing more or less the same things, many companies love the titles though. Some of my friends have titles like "Lead Developer", "Senior Software Engineer", "CTO", "Back-End Developer", etc and they all do pretty much the same thing that I do, so I don't see the point on nitpicking my resume. I will surely take the advice and start calling myself a "Software Developer" instead of "Software Engineer" because I agree that calling myself an engineer without a formal education is misleading.
[1] https://service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/305249/en/