Damn, she deserves that $240k more than a lot of us software developers. This is a hard job.
When you are signing up for a job it's not just the money and the physical things you do - it's also the intangibles, the time spent in unproductive meetings, time spent afterwards feeling unproductive and worried, the resulting stress you have to manage etc, it all adds up and takes away something more than the money. I would argue that well managed jobs with some semblance of stability, human connection and predictability/routine are quite pleasant and easier to do compared to Software/IT.
You think she doesn't have useless meetings she's invited to that every manager in the region needs to attend even though it could've just been an email from the regional director? The stress from the lights busted in the parking lot brought on by worries that a darkened parking lot and a random crime that night might trigger a spurious lawsuit? Doomscrolling about physical retail being replaced by online? That she's falling behind in understanding where robotics might move? That if that particular store was shut down in a strategic shift, she's wedded her entire marketability as an employee to a single company on a single ladder and that she can't really just easily grab a job from a company across the country?
We're not so unique!
It does factor in to the demand side but clearly it’s not the primary factor or else there wouldn’t be any high-paying “easy” jobs.
Caste != social hierarchy. It's divinely-attributed, multi-generational, immutable social hierarchy.
What you're describing is bog-standard social stratification. We aim to do it by economic utility. But even though we're not good at economic mobility [1], in a caste system that mobility is near zero.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility#Worldwide
Caste is a specific system of social hierarchy. What you're describing--some people having it better than others--is common to all systems of social hierarchy.
Social stratification, separation or hierarchy. Or more simply, supply and demand.
What aspect of how we separate people are you trying to home in on?
I think about people playing pro sports for millions and then minimum wage labourers, drivers clerks, cleaners and cooks who make minimum wages. One group are celebrated and the other are essential to society continuing to function.
Based on their feedback, Walmart is a very kind and good employer.
I don't know man, I'd rather make new stuff, ya know.
A big question I've tried to answer in my life is whether the high pay in the software world has an intelligent economic explanation, or maybe a more sinister explanation involving false models encoded in the law.
Is the best garbage person in the world that much more productive than your average person (not even versus another garbage person, but someone you randomly pick and train them for a couple of weeks)?
Based on my years interviewing there are huge levels between the best SW engineers and even those with CS degrees, much less randomly selected people.
Might it be the stuff that programmers work with, the inputs and outputs of the craft, that are covered by laws that create an unnatural economic disequilibrium?
A software developer that saves $0.001 per delivery across 5,000 delivery drivers who make 30 deliveries per hour saves the company $1500 per hour. That gets split with the folks who maintain the CI servers, the Kubernetes cluster, the pen testers and so on. But it's still 25x as much.
The question isn't whether diamonds exist, it is whether laws artificially restrict the supply of diamonds?
If, in your example, these $0.001 savings opportunities were quickly mined, would there remain such high pay for software developers?
What if the pricing power comes not as much from the work being done, but from laws that restrict supply?
But, we're probably all doing some form of the above in one way or another. A few minor edits may make the list a little more familiar to more software folks:
>worry about short-term and long-term [...] planning; works cross-functionally...;... manage upwards; interacts directly with customers
OTOH, there are people who would be driven crazy by sitting in an office all day and wouldn't do it, even for more pay.
Wow, this is such a nonsense view. Software development may seem easy to you, because you know how to do it and probably have been doing it for a long time. But I can assure you, software development is a hard job. If it was easy, everyone and their dog could do it. Have some respect to your profession!
Software developers are often called to do work that's not predictable. At the top of the pay grade we're generally asked to design something novel, because it's obviously not worth paying $240k / year for a developer whose work could be replaced by off-the-shelf software. (Sure, there are many exceptions and cushy jobs where people are raking in the cash with few risks. I'm thinking there are probably less of these around than a few years ago, though.)
Does your "syntax" ever call in sick? Steal from the loading dock? Get punched in the face by an angry customer?