Those smiths will probably make a fraction of what the average software developer will and hopefully they won't die an early death due to some kind of industrial accident. This video might literally be the only mark that one of them leaves on history.
The intelligence and skill it takes to do it though is astounding. These guys might not be even able to read (this is not an assumption, just a possibility), but they can do this as well as anyone on the planet. It's a real monument to human ingenuity.
Meanwhile, his well-educated counterpart in the West can't stop getting job offers because they've figured out how to twiddle some bits. If they're lucky, they might even be able to make something worth hundreds of thousands, or millions, or even billions, and then people will assume that they know what they are doing and that their opinions matter.
But at the end of the day...there's very little difference between them. We're just really smart creatures.
Although software engineers do have a lot of discretion about how they do their job, it's not a repeated process of judgement and dexterity in the way traditional crafts were.
See http://topologicalmedialab.net/xinwei/classes/readings/philt...
edit: I thought it was a Chinese competition I watched before. It seems not. There were similar skill competitions with different large equipment
There's a guy directing them - he's just off frame to the right, and was only visible once that I could tell. But he's directing their movements, both with hand motions and (presumably) orally.