Similar to other professions - engineering and medicine for example - we have a career which requires a dedication to constant learning.
We build systems which allow companies to generate billions in revenue and deserve a slice of the pie.
You're the operator of a machine that exploits on a planetary scale. You might be awesome at operating this machine, but you don't supply the actual value that leads to those billions.
>In all, it takes about eight to ten years to become a professional engineer, depending on whether you decide to get a master's degree.
>Doctors must complete a four-year undergraduate program, along with four years in medical school and three to seven years in a residency program to learn the specialty they chose to pursue. In other words, it takes between 10 to 14 years to become a fully licensed doctor.
I can't see any reasonable argument that engineers are intrinsically worth more, (and I say that as a person that dropped out of Engineering to pursue other opportunities). There might be fewer (good ones) than what the market needs, and this obviously pushes salaries up.
Most of the job training for this field comes from within. Hours, weeks, years alone with a computer. Nobody sees that, and you don't pay someone to administer it to you. But it's absolutely required.
1) Premed - 4 year degree + easily 1-2k+ hours spent volunteering, doing research, gaining medical work experience, obtaining LOR, shadowing, MCAT prep etc. This isn't optional if you actually want any chance of being accepted. Fail to get in and you're working with a (typically) biochem bachelors as a lab tech for $12 an hour and no upward mobility outside of grad school.
2) Medical School - another 4 years of pretty much nonstop studying outside mandated classwork and clinicals. Multiple large exams that basically dictate your entire future and whether you'll be able to match (ie. actually work as a doctor ever) along the way. A few thousand fail to match each year and invested 8 years + 250k med school + 50-100k undergrad to go back to that lab tech career I mentioned at $12/hr. Keep in mind those student loans are non-dischargable through bankruptcy.
3) Residency - 3-7 years. Family Medicine is one of the least rigorous and shortest at 3 years and averages about 10k hours of on the job during that time making less than minimum wage. Surgery is more like 80+ hours/week for much longer with 28 hour shifts standard at the start (minimum, better hope you don't have to finish any work at the end). Oh and don't fuck up because you literally have lives in your hands and face multi-million dollar lawsuits if you mess up after being awake for 20 hours straight on the job.
At the end of all of this and if you matched the most competitive specialties and busted your ass you might be able to make as much as a senior level SV software dev. Or you might be a pediatrician making 150k/yr if that appeals to you more than being wrist deep in someones bowels all day every day, or getting a 3 AM call to come do neurosurgery, or an urgent heart cath. Not feeling it tonight? Well someone is going to literally die if you aren't there within the next 30m- sleep well.
Despite the HN bubble, most developers go to work, do their jobs and go home and don’t think about “side projects”
Then that led to an internship in 1995 at another company and I got a job there in 1996.
I haven’t written a single line of code “for fun” since then. The only reason I have any type of open source presence now is because my current job has a very straightforward open source process that allows us to get approved to put reusable artifacts from customer engagements on the corporate open source Github organization (https://github.com/aws-samples) under an MIT license.
That means I am free to fork it once it gets approved so it shows up on my own profile.
So do adjunct professors, and they're paid peanuts.
> We build systems which allow companies to generate billions in revenue and deserve a slice of the pie.
Capitalists don't care what you think you deserve. Their morality says if the labor market situation means they can get away with paying you peanuts, it's righteous for them to do so, regardless if you do things that "allow companies to generate billions in revenue."
The people who care about getting people paid what they deserve will play a tiny violin for you, since most workers have it way, way worse than software engineers have it now.
95% of that is chasing dumb fads, pop cultures, pointless shiny objects, technology fetishes
Here's a list of the 25 most common jobs in the US according to Indeed: https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/most-comm...
I will confidently say Software Developer (# 24 on the list) is a more difficult job than almost all of them.
Unfortunately (in my opinion), that's not how it is. Given our reality, I think I agree with you that SWEs do deserve that slice of that pie. But I very much wish that more people placed greater priority on benefiting others/society instead.
Those other professions don't get paid nearly as much though
...and deserve a fair slice of the pie.