Your definition only includes physical difficulties (although many developers can tell you that development jobs are horrible for your health, and roofing in th

Your definition only includes physical difficulties (although many developers can tell you that development jobs are horrible for your health, and roofing in the sun actually might be better for your health) But difficult or hard doesn’t mean physically tiring. It is not easier to make complex decisions, nor to dedicate years of training in order to even begin doing a job. Some trades require more training. Things like electrical work or plumbing. In those trades people apprentice and as their experience grows so does their pay, often rivaling or exceeding that of software developers… why? Because it take years of dedication. The reductionism that hard only means physically taxing makes little sense. It leads to the idea that only physical laborers should be paid well, which doesn’t make any economic sense. Does that mean a factory worker that stand around all day pushing a button should get paid next to nothing? Many of those are physically easy (some even provide chairs) but boring as hell. (And before someone says that factory jobs are all hellish, I have talked to people who have done jobs sorting coffee lids, or monitoring automated work lines. And those people’s first hand experience will tell you it’s often just mind numbingly boring, and not at all difficult) Ultimately compensation isn’t made against someone’s arbitrary sense of difficulty. Instead it’s made against how many people are willing and able to do the job. And that’s the current distorted reality. Some people are thinking due to pandemic related consequences that there are fewer people willing and able to do the job.