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Or are developers paid a disproportionate wage in comparison to other jobs? Why should a software developer get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, w

Or are developers paid a disproportionate wage in comparison to other jobs? Why should a software developer get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, while those who weren't lucky enough to be born with the required intelligence (despite what coding bootcamps say, not everyone is cut out to write code) are doomed to work a low-wage job for their entire life? It's the height of privilege. And if you subscribe to the theory that intelligence is a product of a child's developmental environment (nature over nature), it serves to increase social stratification and decrease class mobility. Builders and electricians are just as much key employees as software developers. In Australia, a skilled electrician can earn the same salary as a software developer, and that's the way it should be. My job is easy, I sit at a desk all day. I don't have to wake up at 5 AM every day and spend 8 hours a day (more like 6 in Australia, thanks to the unions) running cables in a construction site. I'd love to see most software developers try their hands at a trade, it's backbreaking work.

titanomachy 6y ago
Because the companies that employ them make lots of money from their labour. Paying them less would mean tech shareholders and CEOs make more profit. Electricians wouldn't somehow magically get paid more if software engineers made less. I guess you're asking society to value buildings more and software less?
numair 6y ago
Your post is a literal summary of why the attitude and performance of software engineers in other countries is so utterly subpar. Having spent a lot of time in Australia, I found the work ethic and culture of the office-bound workers there to be completely unacceptable by American standards. You wouldn’t understand American standards because you don’t understand the difference in work intensity and performance. There’s a reason all of the good workers still head to California.
- adrianN 6y ago
  All my colleagues are good workers and none of them have the intention to move to California. In fact, a good chunk moved out of California.
- justatdotin 6y ago
  "work ethic" : right, huh..
foogazi 6y ago
You briefly grasp the answer in your post: skill >In Australia, a skilled electrician can earn the same salary as a software developer What about the unskilled electrician? Are they paid the same as the skilled one?
Jorge1o1 6y ago
The wage paid to programmers is a function of supply and demand just like everything else in the market. Investment bankers and programmers earn more than your typical American because the supply of bankers and top-level programmers is much tighter. Goldman Sachs and KKR hire from Wharton or HBS, and Google hires grads from CMU or Stanford. Whether they should or shouldn’t restrict their hiring practices is another matter, but their insistence on hiring only the “elite” causes salaries in those fields to skyrocket. Welders and electricians make more money than say a landscaper because you need more training, certifications, exams, and experience to do the job, greatly reducing the pool of available labor. If you want programmers to get paid less, make it easier to become a programmer and get Google to hire more broadly. That’s perhaps why bootcamps and code camps are looked down upon by existing programmers — not just the belief in the superiority of a traditional 4 year computer science education (whether founded or not), but also a realization that if these things catch on they might be paying us all less in the future.
- theamk 6y ago
  Google is a pretty bad example, they are well known for not caring where did you study. As long as you pass their (hellish) interview, they will take you. And bootcamps are not going to help you with that.
  - iainmerrick 6y ago
    they are well known for not caring where did you study No, this is incorrect -- Google has a list of “favored” academic institutions. It’s not used to filter out candidates, so they’ll still hire people from other backgrounds, but studying at a top university is considered to be a positive signal. (Possibly this has changed recently, but it was true through at least 2012 or so.)
    - 908B64B197 6y ago
      Often it's simply the signal to noise ratio. It varies tremendously between institutions.
theamk 6y ago
Because a good team of software engineers can bring a lot of value. They can write a software that saves company millions of dollars. They can can make a product which will bring millions of dollars of profit. And for all that, their labor and equipment expenses will be a fraction of that amount. There are very few professions with profit/cost ratio this high. Writers and media creator come to mind. Definitely not electricians or builders. (Of course not every software engineer is like this. But there are plenty of $60K software jobs in US too, nit everyone gets six digits)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
908B64B197 6y ago
> In Australia, a skilled electrician can earn the same salary as a software developer, and that's the way it should be. The issue here is that the work of a skilled electrician doesn't scale, unlike a software engineer. The classic example is process automation. I would argue software, and engineering in general, is one of the few disciplines where that's possible.
christophilus 6y ago
I think part of it is that a builder’s work has no leverage behind it. A day of work might positively affect the 5 or so people whose house was repaired. A day of software development may impact millions of people.
- mooreds 6y ago
  Yes, this. Compared to a lot of other building professions, software engineers have higher leverage (the same effort can benefit more people). Other careers I'd put in that same boat: * authors * artists * judges * motivational speakers The difference is that I think leverage is more diffuse for software engineers, and it doesn't require fame.

titanomachy 6y ago

Because the companies that employ them make lots of money from their labour. Paying them less would mean tech shareholders and CEOs make more profit. Electricians wouldn't somehow magically get paid more if software engineers made less. I guess you're asking society to value buildings more and software less?

numair 6y ago

Your post is a literal summary of why the attitude and performance of software engineers in other countries is so utterly subpar. Having spent a lot of time in Australia, I found the work ethic and culture of the office-bound workers there to be completely unacceptable by American standards. You wouldn’t understand American standards because you don’t understand the difference in work intensity and performance. There’s a reason all of the good workers still head to California.

adrianN 6y ago
All my colleagues are good workers and none of them have the intention to move to California. In fact, a good chunk moved out of California.
justatdotin 6y ago
"work ethic" : right, huh..

foogazi 6y ago

You briefly grasp the answer in your post: skill >In Australia, a skilled electrician can earn the same salary as a software developer What about the unskilled electrician? Are they paid the same as the skilled one?

Jorge1o1 6y ago

The wage paid to programmers is a function of supply and demand just like everything else in the market. Investment bankers and programmers earn more than your typical American because the supply of bankers and top-level programmers is much tighter. Goldman Sachs and KKR hire from Wharton or HBS, and Google hires grads from CMU or Stanford. Whether they should or shouldn’t restrict their hiring practices is another matter, but their insistence on hiring only the “elite” causes salaries in those fields to skyrocket. Welders and electricians make more money than say a landscaper because you need more training, certifications, exams, and experience to do the job, greatly reducing the pool of available labor. If you want programmers to get paid less, make it easier to become a programmer and get Google to hire more broadly. That’s perhaps why bootcamps and code camps are looked down upon by existing programmers — not just the belief in the superiority of a traditional 4 year computer science education (whether founded or not), but also a realization that if these things catch on they might be paying us all less in the future.

theamk 6y ago
Google is a pretty bad example, they are well known for not caring where did you study. As long as you pass their (hellish) interview, they will take you. And bootcamps are not going to help you with that.
- iainmerrick 6y ago
  they are well known for not caring where did you study No, this is incorrect -- Google has a list of “favored” academic institutions. It’s not used to filter out candidates, so they’ll still hire people from other backgrounds, but studying at a top university is considered to be a positive signal. (Possibly this has changed recently, but it was true through at least 2012 or so.)
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    Often it's simply the signal to noise ratio. It varies tremendously between institutions.

theamk 6y ago

Because a good team of software engineers can bring a lot of value. They can write a software that saves company millions of dollars. They can can make a product which will bring millions of dollars of profit. And for all that, their labor and equipment expenses will be a fraction of that amount. There are very few professions with profit/cost ratio this high. Writers and media creator come to mind. Definitely not electricians or builders. (Of course not every software engineer is like this. But there are plenty of $60K software jobs in US too, nit everyone gets six digits)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

908B64B197 6y ago

> In Australia, a skilled electrician can earn the same salary as a software developer, and that's the way it should be. The issue here is that the work of a skilled electrician doesn't scale, unlike a software engineer. The classic example is process automation. I would argue software, and engineering in general, is one of the few disciplines where that's possible.

christophilus 6y ago

I think part of it is that a builder’s work has no leverage behind it. A day of work might positively affect the 5 or so people whose house was repaired. A day of software development may impact millions of people.

mooreds 6y ago
Yes, this. Compared to a lot of other building professions, software engineers have higher leverage (the same effort can benefit more people). Other careers I'd put in that same boat: * authors * artists * judges * motivational speakers The difference is that I think leverage is more diffuse for software engineers, and it doesn't require fame.