Indeed. A successful US Programmers Guild would probably look more like the American Medical Association. It would restrict training places and increase entranc

Indeed. A successful US Programmers Guild would probably look more like the American Medical Association. It would restrict training places and increase entrance standards over time, doing everything in its power to prevent people who do the same job in other countries from having their qualifications recognized in the US. US physicians earn well over double the average of their UK counterparts, never mind Malaysian or Indian ones. If the AMA didn’t do its best to stop doctors from these countries practicing that kind of differential would be untenable. You’d also probably get some kind of “not a programmer, honest” like nurses in the medical field. In the current climate you can move from being the one who knows pivot table to business intelligence to data analyst to data scientist but with licensing and “professional ethics” there’s always an attempt to maintain a bright line between professionals and “the help”, whether they be paralegals, nurses or draftsmen, compared to lawyers, doctors or engineers.