> "This isn’t a popular opinion among software engineers, but I believe that many in the field are overpaid relative to the difficulty of the work they do." Th

> "This isn’t a popular opinion among software engineers, but I believe that many in the field are overpaid relative to the difficulty of the work they do." This is straight up classism, period. Software devs want to pretend that their high (or even just decent) salaries are due to membership in an elite, highly skilled class. Software development isn't some brain dead job like burger flipping or some gross blue collar job like, ugh, plumbing, right? And there you see the classism raise its ugly head. The denigration of entire job fields. Forcing a separation between "true" developers and other workers also requires denigrating those other workers, how else can "true" developers be raised up higher without pushing lesser workers lower? A lot of engineering is "just" plumbing. So what? A lot of real-engineering is also "just" plumbing (or the equivalent). So what? Does that mean it's valueless? Does that mean people who aren't in the elite should be treated like second class citizens or that they shouldn't make a decent living for their work? The truth is that people who do "just" plumbing work (whether in software development, in engineering, or actual plumbers) still do valuable, high quality work. Still do skilled work (not that that even matters or is a meaningful term). And still deserve to be compensated well for that work. Let's stop shitting on burger flippers and plumbers, let's stop trying to define hard class boundaries between some hypothetical elite of "true" highly skilled knowledge workers and everyone else. Let's stop calling for people to be paid less for their work, almost everyone (even software devs) are being underpaid today. It's unhelpful, it's divisive, it's prejudicial, and it's just mean.