I don't feel the author is belittling plumbers or is saying software engineering in 2018 is less glamorous. I think the point he was getting at is that lots of

I don't feel the author is belittling plumbers or is saying software engineering in 2018 is less glamorous. I think the point he was getting at is that lots of software engineering recruiters and employees treat software like we are making the next PageRank Algorithm or inventing the next rocket. He is pointing out that today lots of what we do is using the already built software to create new things. This is ok, this is still hard, this is still worth a lot but we need to work on our perspective, both for hiring and also for job expectation.