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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of this is due to developers having an odd fit in the office class system. They don't direct other humans, so they're not management; but they're not process-followers either who could be treated as interchangeable. They're not union labour and they're not chartered professionals. They're at the "bottom" of the hierarchy but their individual insight and contribution is indispensable. They tend to get high pay, but not participate in the normal status hierarchy - "normal" professionals buy nicer suits if you pay them more.

The perks are the claim to status. At the same time many people's choice of perks is a bit infantilising, which confuses people outside it.

(There is another, nastier kind of "perk" in many jobs which a few developers indulge in, which is the freedom to abuse lower status staff without real reproach.)

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Is there a lower-status job that pays as well as software development? I guess maybe some very experienced skilled tradespeople, but even those folks are probably pretty high-status when around others in their business.

Software dev is weird. Mostly sneered at or patronized by those up the hierarchy, yet paid really well. Not especially well-regarded outside business hierarchies considering how high the comp is, in no small part due to its acquisition, deserved or not, of a reputation for being a He-Man Woman Haters' club, and also, you know, for being generally nerdy (which was entirely the historical reason for its being low on the social status ladder, until relatively recently).

> Is there a lower-status job that pays as well as software development?

Garbage collectors fit this description in every city I've lived in.

Where do you live that garbage collectors make as much as programmers?

This is a Lisp joke, isn't it.

Not OP, but I checked for Austin, Texas, and a part time entry level position is 20$ an hour.

https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=Waste%20Collector&l=Austin%2C%...

That was one of the first results, but it seems like the average is generally lower, around $15 an hour. My first tech job was as a Linux sysadmin in a web hosting company in Houston circa 2011, which paid 17 an hour.

This was with no formal education or experience (I'd played around with Linux at home and wanted to work with it professionally). So I'd say the claim that garbage collectors make the same as programmers appears to be generally untrue.

Yeah, there is. In the oil industry (actually many jobs in the industry) there’s a job where you need only add and subtract, work odd hours, put yourself in no greater danger than delivering pizza except that you’ll pull $280k/year if you’re lazy and $320k+ if you’re trying hard.

"of a reputation for being a He-Man Woman Haters' club"

This is wrong and revisionist to boot. You're projecting your own biases or poor experiences on an entire industry.

Management looks down on programmers because they are not management. When one has real power and status it's easy to look down on others.

Meant outside of management. Status among the general public. That's become one of the three main things associated with software development, from what I've seen, alongside "nerdy" and "kinda makes a lot of money, maybe".

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