All developers think they are smart and have skills that are hard to acquire. Reality Check - anyone can be a programmer. If you want to be a part of an exclusi

All developers think they are smart and have skills that are hard to acquire. Reality Check - anyone can be a programmer. If you want to be a part of an exclusive club go become a doctor or a lawyer or take up some other career that requires a professional degree -- think about it 3 years from now you can be a lawyer and about 7 years from now you could be well on your way to being a doctor -- or you could be a blue collar programmer with 3 years or 7 years experience respectively. What's the problem? You say you're too smart for a blue-collar job right. In short programmers need to get over themselves. Just because your job requires reading (Rails tutorials) doesn't make you a genius that deserves $170,000/yr salary. Its funny because this haughtiness and ego of the average programmer is what sometimes makes otherwise wonderful work environments miserable places to work. I can't tell you how many job offers I've turned down because I encounter the 26 year old who introduces himself as the "Lead architect" of a simple monolithic rails application but now I digress.