I've seen this mentioned a few times on HN. I find it a confusing concept.
My position is 100% fungible. I write code to solve problems. There are thousands of people that can write equivalent code to solve the same problems.
I'm legitimately interested: can you expand on how my position isn't fungible?
It's fungible only when the entire set of available workers shares your competence (i.e. your skill-set, relevant experience, and business domain knowledge) - or - can be quickly trained to acquire such competence.
...and I'll wager that the vast majority (90%-ish?) of the working-age and almost-working-age population in your country is both unqualified to write software professionally and is not interested in spending 2-4 years of their life to study CS or SE to a level sufficient to do the work you currently do. Of the other 10% at least 9.95% of them won't have your business domain knowledge needed to do your job such that you make the right decisions early-on or slow down others by bringing them in for help, and so on.
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What I was complaining about was when it's reported in the news, or ever really said by anyone, that "opening this new coal-mine in Greenhippieville, CA will create 5,000 jobs!" or that "the economy added 10,000 jobs this month" - because the "jobs" those numbers refer to could be anything without further qualification, and doing that will make the conversation too technical for a general audience.
You left out the most salient point here, most people are entirely unable to write software even if their life depended on it. Just like I doubt I'd be able to write a symphony in 4 years even with a ticking time bomb strapped to my skull.
A developers' core skill is not getting overwhelmed after being blindsided by new shit from every angle on a constant basis.
We have 30% of out team just dealing with auto-reported vulnerabilities in our code base. No choice. Getting an "exception" takes an architect about a week for a vuln that has no material impact and which can't be mitigated with a simple library update. Tip of the ice berg.
This is at an excellent tech focused company (relatively great place to work).
Gold is fungible. You can mine gold anywhere in the world and it's worth the same.
The level of skill to be able to code effectively is not something a large proportion of the population has. People have scoffed at the idea that programming requires a high IQ (let's call it what it is), calling it elitist or something, but you don't expect any random joe to be able to be a professional illustrator, musician, juggler, diver, climber, writer or mathematician.
The real problem, has Jordan Peterson points out, is what will society do with people on the low end of the IQ curve, as more and more skills are required and unskilled labor is being eliminated by technology?