First, I agree with the sentiments of some of the above commenters, "coders" just sounds ridiculous. Now, this question is ambiguous between two different inte

First, I agree with the sentiments of some of the above commenters, "coders" just sounds ridiculous. Now, this question is ambiguous between two different interpretations of being "worth it". Clearly engineers are "worth it" by any economic metric--viz. high employment rates and high salaries (when mean rates are compared to other disciplines/jobs). But I take the OP to have an existential dimension built into the query. Meaning: does a hacker value what she does when contrasted against what she could be doing? So, whether or not hackers value what they do is completely different from what they do being worth while. Perhaps someone working on something at Google may value what she does less than working on her own startup idea. In this respect, to each his own.