There are many types of "EE" and "PE" specialties. After graduation a "PE" has been through an apprenticeship (of several years), then a board of exams. An "EE" simply received a diploma. A PE can register in the local jurisdiction and certify installations (in his specialty) and this certification has standing in a court proceeding. A controls engineer (very math intensive) probably could not recognize a surge suppressor if it fell on him.

I hate when some snotty guy (its always a guy) attempts to pull rank on me with: "I'm an Electrical Engineer and ...". I recall a receiver model that had a known power supply problem caused by a transistor failure and some bad solder joints. There was a factory bulletin about this. One or both rails of the power supply (often intermittently) would go down and one would perform this repair before turning the unit ON to look for any remaining symptoms. I don't recall any other failures associated with this model. One of the common symptoms was a grossly off center FM tuning meter. An "I'm an Electrical Engineer" customer derided me for not replacing an integrated circuit to cure the off center meter. There were no integrated circuits in this power supply design or dedicated to the meter. The FM tuner was fine -- when it had power. Had he been as sharp as he thought he was, he would have also noticed that the amplifier was forever in protection because of the funky power supply.