I would argue that software engineers do have a long hard road to becoming successful much like a doctors or lawyers however in most cases it's been amortized o

I would argue that software engineers do have a long hard road to becoming successful much like a doctors or lawyers however in most cases it's been amortized over their life using computers and much of it driven by the desire to learn rather then the requirements of some degree. I would go one step further and say that if you pick any random person off the street and throw them into a college CS program the vast majority would not do well even if they were very intelligent, there is a certain personality type required to excel in writing code if you're not good at concentrating on a single task for hours at a time well I'm sure there is something else out there for you. Also lets not forget that finishing a degree does not make a good engineer, shipping production software does and that is not something you can learn in 9 weeks or even four years at college. The lower end jobs may get tighter as time goes on but I don't see an "Auto Workers" type future until Skynet gets off the ground (Machine Learning FTW>?)