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This is pretty ridiculous. Lawyers, Bankers, and Doctors get to play in intellectual sandboxes, and they get paid really handsomely for it, even if they are co
by RodericDay 11y ago
This is pretty ridiculous.
Lawyers, Bankers, and Doctors get to play in intellectual sandboxes, and they get paid really handsomely for it, even if they are completely anti-social people.
The reason we get paid less is that we don't have any of their safeguards:
- Lawyers aim to become partner. It's very socialist-y this way. The goal working in a firm is to become an owner of the firm and share in its successes.
- Doctors have a guild. They keep their bottom end tight by regulating who becomes a doctor, keeps them always in demand.
- Bankers know how much things are worth. That's their business. They know how much they generate, even if they are far from the point of sale. They also aren't squeamish about asking how much their co-workers make, and negotiate aggressively.
Programmers should start realizing that the main reason we make little is that we undercut each other a lot, and are outright hostile to many tools that other professions use to safeguard their position.
- rb808 11y agoI think Lawyers and Doctors I think are much similar to programmers than you think. Regular front line grunt work employees work long hours and get paid decent professional wage. As you said they can get promoted to Partner, a partner is a part owner of the business, they don't do much technical work, they do a lot of management. There are similar opportunities for Software people to start small companies and make money too. its not quite the same as there aren't the big company partnerships, but big startups with employee stock are close. The biggest difference is the half life of knowledge in Software is much shorter.
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoBoth lawyers and doctors have powerful associations that control and regulate the labor supply via a certification process. Technology doesn't have this. In fact, technology has the opposite: a H1B program that brings in more and more labor supply to keep wages low.
- smitherfield 11y agoYou could go further regarding lawyers: they're a government jobs program. On balance a beneficial one, but a government jobs program nonetheless. If there were no government there would still be doctors and programmers (albeit probably fewer), but there wouldn't be any lawyers.
- collyw 11y agoPeople also seem to value experienced Doctors and Lawyers. They just see the front of a web application, and if it looks OK they assume that it has been put together well.
- Grishnakh 11y agoYep, this leads me to my biggest regret as a programmer: going into engineering instead of medicine. I really should have become a doctor or some other kind of hospital worker instead: the money would have been at least as good, and I would have gotten to work in a place with lots of women.
- Grishnakh 11y agoOh yeah, I forgot another huge point: you don't have to worry much about being laid off when you work in medicine.
- orangecat 11y agoYou would also have had to go to school for several more years, incur massive debt in the process, and work insane hours for virtually no pay as a resident.
- Grishnakh 11y agoYeah, but the long-term rewards definitely seem worth it. Also, they cut back on the residency requirements a while back because sleep-deprived residents were making fatal mistakes.
- tamana 11y agoYou are the first person who ever described the lawyers' dog-eat-dog up-or-out competition for parter as "socialism" -- unless you meant it as a sarcastic analogy to Chinese Communist Party