> I get asked all the damn time by young people in my side job how they can become software developers so they too can make the big bucks. Simple, put fingers o

> I get asked all the damn time by young people in my side job how they can become software developers so they too can make the big bucks. Simple, put fingers on keyboard, struggle, and figure it out through practice. None of them follow through. None. Some of these guys make far less than the national average and they still aren't motivated. That's a good point, and I know exactly the kind of people you mean, but that's not because those people lack the drive to struggle for more money. It's because they really have no interest in programming whatsoever but become convinced that they can overcome that lack of interest long enough to learn how to do it. But they all underestimate how freaking boring programming can be and how it really takes a certain personality type to do it. Honestly, I think if programmers all got $500,000 a year and our own private jets, it wouldn't increase the pool of competent programmers by all that much. This is a phenomenon that's pretty unique to programming, so I don't think that's what Kashkari was talking about. I feel like he's talking more about people who want a better job in their same field but perhaps all the better jobs are a little bit too far away from them, or maybe the better jobs contain more responsibility than they can handle at their pay rate, etc. So if you just bump the salary up a little bit, you expand your circle of applicants just enough to include a few more qualified people.