There are a lot of very fundamental misunderstandings of economics and labor structures in here. But I'll start with the general objection that you'll run into:
The core of your argument is entitled whining.
Computer programmers can make truckloads of money the same way that everyone else can: by seeking it. If your professional goals are aligned with making money, then your chances of making a lot of money go way up. Top lawyers aren't paid the most because they know the law the best; that's ancillary. They're paid big bucks because they win money for their clients, prevent their clients from losing money and build networks to people that have money to give them. Likewise, programmers who define their goals economically (which broadly includes creating value for users) have nearly unparalleled earning potential.
8 of the 20 richest people in America are (or have been, at least nominally) programmers.
The crux of things is that you don't get rich for being a skilled technician -- and I use that word broadly. Lawyers don't get rich for knowing the law, bankers don't get rich for understanding economics and programmers don't get rich for slinging code. You get rich by creating value (or at least tying yourself at an opportune moment to a benefactor whose goals are so aligned).
The rest of folks are compensated at prevailing market rates for their technical skills -- and incidentally, American programmers are paid better than in almost any other country.
But claiming that "computer programmers don't get respect" is broken on so many levels. First, computer programmers are certainly among the most respected trades. You need to interact with a broader cross-section of society if you believe that not to be the case. Second, the baseline for becoming a programmer isn't very high -- certainly nothing on the order of becoming a doctor or lawyer. The median programmer has jumped over far fewer hurdles than the median doctor or lawyer. (I got my first programming job at 17. I'd have needed another decade of non-trivial training before I'd have been able to get a job as a doctor.) The spectrum is far broader for programmers, and as such, the respect a programmer commands has more to do with their actual status within those ranks than simply being a part of that trade. But again, the spectrum extends up to "richest person in the world", so we're hardly being shafted.
If being respected among the elite is something that you want, align your goals with that. If it's not, enjoy the fact that you're in a trade where even untrained, mediocre practitioners reach the top 10% of American incomes.
Let me start by stating that you reply is somewhat of an example of HN-bias...
The world of programming is vast. Larger than "America", larger than Sillicon Valley, larger than the world of startups, and certainly much larger than the "elite" that regularly reads (and comments on) HN and pats each other in the back.
Even if we accept that programmers are well-paid and respected (two different propositions) in the technology sector, most programming jobs are _not_ in the technology sector, but spread throughout the corporate world. And corporate programmers are all but respected.
In your average company, a programmer is considered a glorified mechanic or janitor, a code-monkey if you will, well below the guys that "bring in the money" like sales and marketing. It is an expense, something that the company has to live with because someone has to implement the ideas that the guys in charge come up with to help the guys that "bring in the money" bring in more money.
Besides manufacturing, programmers are on the first line for outsourcing, and it is no coincidence that an expression such as "software factories" exists. Why do you think this is?
Most programmers will only actually _program_ for a few years before going into management positions. There are few "old" programmers around, and those that survive are often met with disdain. "What? You are 35 and still a programmer?" kind of disdain.
When the average corporate user spends most of his time in front of a computer, forced to use boring applications day-in and day-out, how do you think he feels about the people that build those applications?
And even outside the corporate world... If you are a doctor, or a lawyer, or a freakin' sales guy, people will listen to your stories, at least for a while. On the other hand, if you are a programmer and even start to talk about what you do for a living, people's eyes will glaze in boredom instantly.
Disclaimer: I am _not_ a programmer (I'm a sysadmin, which is mostly the same, although usually better respected because sysadmin positions tend to be longer-running inside companies).
For the record, I don't live in the US and only spent 3 of my 10 years of full-time software development at startups (my own). The US is just a convenient and familiar frame of reference.
There always exists a context where a given person is on the low end of the totem pole. You can almost always shift the goal-posts by moving around within society to find a place where you're a relative dunce. It seems totally plausible to me that programmers aren't at the top of the food-chain in positions in non-software companies.
But if you go out into the broader world ... the world where my brother works at Walgreens and my sister is a tour guide at the zoo, where my best friend just got fired and is about to move back in with her mom, my grandfather sold tractors and my mom is an elementary school teacher ... in that world being a computer programmer is a respected trade.
I feel like you zoomed out some, but if you zoom out even further, all of the sudden being a programmer is respected again. You're right that we orientate ourselves relative to our peers and that's the lens that we see the world through, but the broader world isn't all white-collar knowledge-workers.
As a somewhat disconnected point, and this probably partially owing to the fact that most of my professional experience is in Europe, being a 30-something programmer here is totally normal. In fact, I'm 31 and most of the programmers I've worked with have been older than me. The median age seems to be more 35-ish, with a lot of people still working in normal programming positions into their 40s and 50s. The distribution here more seems to follow the pattern of there simply being a lot more people that started programming in the 90s or 2000s than in the 70s or 80s rather than a particularly strong age bias against programmers.
I've also not experienced the total lack of interest in programming. Lots of my friends -- most of who are non-technical -- ask questions about it. I suspect part of the problem may simply be that a lot of programmers aren't particularly good communicators.
Exactly. Even in this thread, it is appalling how quickly people reach for the "but look at Google!" argument.
Guys, Google is a top paid company in a top paid part of one of the richest countries in the world! Stop throwing around 6-figure salaries (in US dollars, no less).
I can attest to the fact that in Europe, programmers have respect on the level of assembly line workers. By Europe I mean countries from UK to Belgium to Czech to Romania. It's an ok job, you get paid some money, or even good money if you're skilled and know the right people. But your parents would much prefer you picked a respectable profession, like a doctor or a lawyer.
The reason I see for this is that IT is the wild-wild-west free market at the moment. That's why it's so successful, disruptive, productive and generally awesome. And why it scares parents. But it's also filled with wide-eyed, passionate kids who were so busy fighting each other and comparing e-penises that they didn't even notice when the old hands commoditized them. Remember, revolutions eat their own children.
Still, I am very much against introducing unions and regulations to artificially limit the market. The last paragraph of the original post is spot-on. The only way to gain respect is not to cry for it, but to realize your value and hold your head high. Sadly, programmers as a community seem to have already lost that battle.
"...programmers have respect on the level of assembly line workers... [in the] UK... your parents would much prefer you picked a respectable profession, like a doctor or a lawyer."
In the UK, sure, being a lawyer or doctor is much more prestigious than being a programmer. However, to equate programmers to (presumably unskilled) assembly-line workers is total nonsense.
> However, to equate programmers to (presumably unskilled) assembly-line workers is total nonsense.
Really? Is it so absurd?
Some programming tasks certainly require a lot of skill and insight. Not everyone could be a senior developer on a major software project, or start a successful business making their software from scratch.
On the other hand, many programming tasks today are very much like an assembly line: here are some parts, glue them together like this, make a product. A scary number of "programmers" today lack even basic background knowledge of the theory underlying their work, or a proper understanding of their tools, or any particular training and experience (academic, personal projects/self-study, or otherwise) that qualifies them to work on industrial, commercial projects.
Unsurprisingly, those people produce crap. Their software doesn't do what users need, or loses users' data, or crashes users' computers, or in the Internet age has security problems that let malware onto users' systems. Funnily enough, the people paying for that crap don't much appreciate it, and the software industry generally has a poor reputation for being able to produce good quality work as a result of these fools.
Of course, smart programmers have also built things like the Internet and air traffic control that can co-ordinate landing dozens of planes an hour safely, but people take it for granted that these things work without any understanding of how difficult it is to get such critical software right, and most professional programmers will never work on such important projects anyway.
I don't see how we're going to start distinguishing between software developers who know what they're doing and those who don't until we have some sort of competent and authoritative professional standards body. I don't see how we're going to have one of those until our industry is grown up enough to set useful professional standards. We clearly aren't ready for that today, with widespread ignorance in the industrial community, academics whose theories often don't stand up to practical applications, management who can't even estimate a project within a factor of 5 for time and budget, and consultants who peddle the Next Big Thing as if snake oil was going out of fashion. And thus the vicious cycle goes on, and probably will until our industry is a lot more mature.
Until then, many so-called professional programmers are pretty close to unskilled assembly line workers, and it is a strange idea that they should earn 10x the wage of someone working an eight-hour shift under far less pleasant conditions in a factory to produce goods that you and I rely on every day.
It all comes down to the point you make about there being no widespread absolute consensus on the best way to develop software: our industry moves too fast and contradicts itself too often for institutions and standards to become permanently established. But I suspect, comparatively, we are actually doing much better than more mature fields such as law and medicine (who took hundreds of years from their founding to reach what they have achieved today).
Also, maybe law and medicine aren’t that great. Every time I visit my GP these days I’m always struck by how he basically has no idea what is wrong with me. And our legal system seems to be pretty out of date in the light of more recent findings in psychology and changes in society caused by the Internet.
I'd taken to calling myself a 'digital garbageman' for a time, because that's essentially what I was. I had some corp jobs, and it was mostly cleaning up other peoples' code. I said it tongue-in-cheek, but I did feel that way, and eventually left corporate work to hang out my own shingle. This time around, I'm primarily solo, and sub out work to people to augment my time/skills.
I've gotten much better about charging rates I'm comfortable with, and finding clients that a) can afford it and b) find value in what I do at those rates. It would actually be nicer to do 'value-based' pricing, vs hourly, but it's not something that both parties are usually able to agree on. Unless you know a particular industry well, it may be hard to understand the full value of the work you do. Even then, the company may much prefer to pay hourly or much lower rates, simply because they can probably find someone else to do it.
With medical and legal professions, the licensing/regulation creates a large barrier to entry, and people have to go to those professionals for certain tasks. You can represent yourself in court, for example, but it's often frowned on, but you generally can't prescribe yourself your own medication. With software, no licensing/regulation exists, so there's generally a much broader range of skills and value in the marketplace, which dilutes the value perception many people have.
Agreed on the age thing. As long as there's a youth-obsessed focus in the software world (and I think it's done just as much by us inside than by the outside world) it'll be hard to get the respect we'd like as a profession, simply because most people don't treat it as a career. Would you rather use a 22 year old lawyer, or a 52 year old lawyer? How about a 22 year old developer vs a 52 year old developer? :)
"With medical and legal professions, the licensing/regulation creates a large barrier to entry"
This is the heart of the differences in pay. Expensive certifications keep the supply of doctors and lawyers artificially low and thus their average salaries higher. Meanwhile, anyone with a computer can start programming software.
well, as a rule, so far, the 52-year-old developers don't get the jobs over the 22 year olds. That'll hopefully change as more of us get older though :)
My one other thought - way too late to the game here - is that many/most developers seem to choose their 'respect' in the form of free sodas, air hockey tables, nerf gun fights, flex time and other similarly frivolous/trivial 'perks'. It's not how I would choose to be respected, but it seems that's what enough developers seem to gravitate towards that it's set the perception of developers in the marketplace.
This is now how software developers are courted - "hey, this place has free sodas! and you can play ping pong!" Nothing wrong with those, but I'd rather take more cash. I a talked to a company about a position, and postponed, then came to them about 9 months later, and was offered $30k less than what we'd talked about before. I inquired about this rather massive discrepancy, and was told "we have free gym memberships, and all the free soda you can drink!". Tell you what... I'll buy my own sodas, drink fewer of them, not need the gym as much, and buy my own gym membership closer to my home with the extra $30k, thank you very much.
I'd also rather be able to come in, have people respect what I say, take my ideas seriously, and not have to deal with a load of internal politics on a daily basis. That tends to be the life of a contractor/consultant, and it suits me better.
Indeed. I'm a 41-year-old developer and have spent most of my career working in university research departments. Just a grown-up amongst grown-ups. I had an interview the other day with a start-up whose HR department and developer-interviewers insisted on talking about the "free lunches" they provide. I mean, when it came to question time for me they actually asked whether I wanted to know anything else about the lunches. By then they must have realised I couldn't give a shit. I was and still am just bemused by how this could possible attract anyone, of any age. I mean, do I look like an idiot? I'll make my own sandwiches and take the money instead please.
Now, I'm not against free lunches. In a large enough group, I think it's a nice thing to offer - you get a variety of stuff you might not otherwise cook for yourself, communal eating is fun sometimes (not all the time), etc. But... as a stated 'benefit' that you know is being offered in lieu of extra cash... not sure that sways me.
Yes, free lunches are fine, and communal eating thing much of the week would work well for me and no doubt for the team's performance. If I was told we each together a few times a week, that would be hugely important. As it was, I tend to imagine individuals scurrying to the kitchen, and taking a boxed meal from the fridge back to their desk while they're still working. I should have asked which of these actually happened.
> If you are a doctor, or a lawyer, or a freakin' sales guy, people will listen to your stories, at least for a while. On the other hand, if you are a programmer and even start to talk about what you do for a living, people's eyes will glaze in boredom instantly.
What saddens me is that it happens inside the industry too. Too many times I have seen and talked to programmers who seem to consider themselves 'glorified janitors'. If you mention anything science/tech/IT-related outside of 09:00-17:00 period, you'll get shunned for being a geek. I say, WTF? I respect people who came to programming 'for the money' rather than because of being interested, however I consider disrespectfully discarding science/tech/IT stories while being too happy to discuss tourism, sports and cooking as a sign of mental limitation and general lack of respect to other people.
Until last year I was a programmer of pure heart, that would despise perspective of working 09:00-17:00 as a programmer, and then go home and 'have a life'. Programming for me was, and still is, a creative art and a tool to solve problems worth solving. However, since then I started working and actually earning money for my expenses, instead of relying on parents, and this pretty much shifted my perspective. You need to take money from somewhere if you want to eat (and support people both above and below you on the family tree). Also, it's really hard to find a job that would be perfectly aligned with your dreams/goals - that actually hurted the most. I understand now that people have different priorities, and life is not so simple, and people tend not to have everything 'figured out'.
While I still strive to find a way to give value to human society to the best of my abilities, and don't want to end in a corporate 0900-1700 job and make money for the sake of making money, I understand and respect people who chose differently. I believe, that there are other interesting things I might learn from them. However, I expect the same respect from them, that I give to them. Otherwise, we have nothing to talk about.
Sorry I only just got round to reading your reply. What you say is interesting and all but hazy. What is your actual reason for respecting them other than the fact that you acknowledge there might be reasons for their decision? To my mind that doesn’t warrant respect, but the suspension of judgement until you have more information.
Respect to a human being in general? I try to give it by default, unless someone works really hard to loose it.
Maybe you're right about that, phrasing it as 'suspension of judgement' is more accurate. I used to treat 'programming just for money' as disrespectful; now I assign to it the default value of respect I assign to everything else that I don't give special considerations.
> In your average company, a programmer is considered a glorified mechanic or janitor, a code-monkey if you will, well below the guys that "bring in the money" like sales and marketing. It is an expense, something that the company has to live with because someone has to implement the ideas that the guys in charge come up with to help the guys that "bring in the money" bring in more money.
It's worse than that. Even in the tech sector, the situation you describe sometimes happens. I have yet to fully analyze that kind of situation, but i've already come with some criteria that might help identify such environments.
What is sad is that it's merely a reflect of the mainstreams governance models at wide scale (and only worse: democracy is even less frequent in companies than in countries...), which have proven to be poor, and will prove to be catastrophic in a near future.
Of course in the real world things happen on a continuous scale, but if by bad luck the environment you're in exactly fit below exacerbate description, run!
1. A strictly tree like, military like hierarchy, ruling everything in strict tree order regardless of its a tech, hr, or other issue. This is one of the most effective way to waste talent and to take non optimal decisions (and not even near to optimal) -- add not taking into account bottom-up proposals if you want the perfect mix to achieve a high level of ineffectiveness.
2. The hierarchical tree is strict enough so that programmers typically can't even be spontaneously inspired by new ideas, which often is not enough to kill a business, but just to impede it, so sadly the situation might persist.
3. Each programmer is considered as a "just another programmer" in the company, regardless of achievement, knowledge, skill. The paradoxical part is that does not mean that individual requests are not done to the good people when needed, but it looks like not much people would recognize that when they have no question. Improvements in achievement, knowledge, skill are neither fully exploited and often not rewarded at all, directly leading to a high turnover.
4. Small valorisation of tech realization for those who actually do them, regardless at which level (that can go as far as considering programming mainly as a cost center that needs to be beaten into submission to behave, and preventing it from getting helpful resources).
Lesser versions of those situations exist, leading to more effective tech companies that are more programmers friendly. The two often somehow go together. At the end of this better path, you have some companies like MS, Google.
(not exempt from pb, but they arguably are not that bad)
I can only speak from my American experience, working as a software engineer for ~12 years in NYC. I am 33 years old--I never feel too old for this. My non-tech co-workers and engineering peers respect me very much. I love them back. We do awesome shit together. I solve hard problems and make beautiful software. I work hella hard but get paid well and I love every second of it. I am so glad I do what I do and when I read about people not being respected and not loving their work, I can only suggest that you do something else or do it somewhere else. The world is your oyster. Life is short. Carpe diem!!
"When the average corporate user spends most of his time in front of a computer, forced to use boring applications day-in and day-out, how do you think he feels about the people that build those applications?"
The thing is that those apps don't have to be boring. Most apps are low-quality, in code and design, as a result of a management philosophy that considers developers as low-value. Apple is a good counter-example. They put a high value in quality of code and design, and as a result even their settings dialogs are a pleasure to use. I've never come across a category of software that couldn't be made pleasant to use with some inspired design and coding.
I say that corporate apps are boring whatever you do to make them less so. Corporate users don't use those apps because they want to, they use them because they must use them to perform their work. It's the obligation that's the killer.
Firstly, if you disagree, that's fine. But saying my arguments are "entitled whining" isn't disagreement, it's name calling. DH0, to use Paul Graham's phrase.
Secondly, some of my arguments might be wrong, but I provide numbers and evidence to back them up.
"Likewise, programmers who define their goals economically (which broadly includes creating value for users) have nearly unparalleled earning potential."
Evidence? If you're talking about startups, I already covered that. Read the post.
"and incidentally, American programmers are paid better than in almost any other country."
This is sophistry. American Xs are paid better than non-American Xs because America has a high GDP per capita, pretty much regardless of X.
"First, computer programmers are certainly among the most respected trades."
Citation? And, adjusted for IQ, skill, hours worked, degrees earned, and so on?
"If it's not, enjoy the fact that you're in a trade where even untrained, mediocre practitioners reach the top 10% of American incomes."
But saying my arguments are "entitled whining" isn't disagreement, it's name calling.
Actually it's not. Name calling would be if I called you an entitled whiner. There's a difference between attacking your argument and attacking you. (And if we're sticking to the taxonomy, that part of my comment would be DH2, "responding to tone".)
Evidence?
That was the crux of my post. Programmers do get filthy rich (usually via starting tech companies). You're right that at that point they're not programming, but that's because programming in isolation has limited economic value. Using the skills one acquires as a programmer and aiming them at value creation has created a large chunk of America's billionaires. And while that phenomenon is not unique to programming in the least -- in fact, it holds across almost any skilled trade (i.e. soft-skills begin to dominate hard-skills) -- the upper bound is demonstrably higher for programming (as evidenced by the list of richest Americans) than it is for almost any field.
American Xs are paid better than non-American Xs because America has a high GDP per capita
No, I meant relative to GDP per capita. I live in Germany where programmer salaries are about 50% above the GDP per capita, whereas in the US it's about 75%. From what I've gathered, in the UK, it's closer to 25%.
Citation?
It's nigh on impossible to measure "respect" in some sort of meaningful way, but here's a list from a couple seconds of Googling on the "Best Jobs in America":
1: Software Architect
7: Database Administrator
18: Software Engineering / Development Director
20: Information Technology Manager
21: Telecommunications Network Engineer
24: Network Operations Project Manager
26: Information Technology Business Analyst
30: Test Software Development Engineer
31: Information Technology Network Engineer
33: Information Technology Program Manager
38: Applications Engineer
Your citation for the average programmer salary is from 2005. Salaries have gone up significantly since then. Even just adjusting for inflation (and ignoring the recent IT boom) puts it above the 10% ($82,500) bar. I have no idea what percentage of programmers hold computer science degrees, but it's certainly not "all" and I wouldn't be surprised if it's not "most".
One of the things that's somewhat endemic to your case is shifting back and forth between comparing the median with the top tier. Average doctors, bankers and lawyers aren't making the salaries you suggested. Median programmers aren't particularly impressive.
Let's split it out:
Elite programmers do things like start software companies, work at corporate research labs, work in financial engineering or work on high-profile open source projects. Those folks command respect and have high earning potential. (Though interestingly, among the elite of these groups, programmers probably have the lowest percentage of completed formal training.)
Elite investment bankers are measured heavily on their returns and a large portion of their compensation is bonuses. Elite lawyers are measured on their returns (wins) and compensated to a significant extent relative to their non-legal social skills (i.e. their network).
Median programmers write intellectually trivial code that solves uninteresting problems. Training is optional and there are virtually no systematic hurdles to cross to enter the trade. They still make relatively high salaries relative to societal norms.
Median lawyers work on intellectually trivial cases. Formal training and certification is required and compensation is relatively high, but nothing that will generate notable wealth. Median investment bankers (my father would have been in said category) mostly convince a handful of clients they've been given by their organization to invest in a 90% cookie cutter portfolio and are compensated reasonably well -- varying largely on their ability to source their own clients. (But first year run of the mill stock brokers probably make less than first year run of the mill programmers.) Formal training is theoretically optional (though there's a de facto requirement of a degree in something) and formal certification is required. Again, no notable wealth is generated in this category.
At the low end, the gap isn't particularly wide between these groups. At the high end, folks from finance and programming backgrounds comprise a disproportionately large percentage of the economic ultra-elite and lawyers of the political ultra-elite. It still bewilders me that given that demonstrable fact, that you'd brand our profession as not getting any respect.
Let's be honest here. It's hard to define respect, but an overwhelming majority of parents would rather have their daughter marry a lawyer or a doctor, than a programmer. That right there gives you a strong indicator of society's take on the issue. I'm not arguing that programmers get no respect (they do pretty well among non-prestigious trades). I'm arguing that programmers are not perceived as belonging to the same professional elite that lawyers and doctors belong to.
Well, if you want potential mothers-in-law to gaze lovingly, consider that they have interacted with physicians and attorneys and know what their value is, as has our society for centuries. Stand up straight, offer eye contact and a warm smile, and if you're every bit as smart and dedicated as the average finance dude, what is left to prove? Be confident that you can quickly educate anyone on the nobility of your professional choice. Any doc or lawyer can lay it on thick. ;)
In all seriousness...I don't altogether get this gripe. I guess because I went to art school and will never, ever have any "power," let alone money. But it was _my_ choice. I'd rather be doing something fun that I'm good at.
It has nothing to do with respect. Parents in most cases do not understand technology, much less programming whereas they can understand what an attorney or doctor does. The lawyer can keep you out of jail. The doctor can keep you from dying. What the heck does a programmer do that's so important? Note - I'm a programmer. I'm just look at it from their position. Then again, I live in Silicon Valley. When I say I write iPhone apps nobody looks down on me --- in fact quite the opposite.
I concur with this sentiment. When I meet new people, and they ask me what I do and I say I 'make and market websites' they stop - chin drops - and they say 'wait... you MAKE websites?! Like you MAKE them? Give me your number'.
Sure, moms don't romanticize their kids becoming a programmer. However by people who understand what value you can bring, you are greatly respected - almost as if you are a magical being capable of things beyond mere mortals.
Actually it's not. Name calling would be if I called you an entitled whiner. There's a difference between attacking your argument and attacking you.
The difference is very minor.
Median programmers write intellectually trivial code that solves uninteresting problems. Training is optional and there are virtually no systematic hurdles to cross to enter the trade.
A median programmer has BS in computer science, understands basics of computer hardware architecture, OS administration, networking and database management. Keeps current with the latest industry trends, has familiarity with a number of complex development tools and, in addition to all that, specializes in some area of programming.
What I listed above are the implied prerequisites for almost any mid-level developer position out there.
> That was the crux of my post. Programmers do get filthy rich (usually via starting tech companies).
There is a big problem with this argument. It is true that there is a good number of rich programmers. However, this doesn't mean anything for the broad class of people working in the same occupation. For example, this is similar to saying that being a singer is a good job because there are a lot of rich singers in the world. However, the average singer can't even put food on the table.
Similarly, the fact that there are some rich programmers doesn't mean that the category is doing well. In fact, pointing to these successes is unhelpful, because it can mask the problems found by normal people.
Imagine if someone made the statement:
"This is a tinfoil hat argument." Or, more directly: "This is an idiotic argument". How about "that argument is positively pedophiliac!"
Any time you take a pejorative term and apply it to the argument, it is always going to sound like you're applying it to there person. In most cases, that's the way it reads as well. It seems a way to engage in personal attack while being able to pretend to have only been characterizing the argument.
If you said "this argument has logical fallacy X because Y is Z" that would be a characterization of the argument of a totally different color. That would be addressing weaknesses in the argument, rather than anthropomorphizing it.
I have no opinion or position on your intentions, and presume that it wasn't your intention to characterize the person making the argument. I'm just trying to show why that form of characterizing the argument comes off as a personal attack.
Many of the top programmers at Google are making much more than you mentioned in your post. The amount you mentioned is more in line with a ~20 something there, in total compensation.
A Bachelors degree does not compare to medical school + residency (they also have to get a bachelor's before starting those two). While you're making money for 8 years at a comfortable 9-6, they're spending over 100k to train themselves and performing physically and mentally exhausting work.
Also, in the medical profession, those in primary care don't make the huge amounts you posted - many are below 200k, some far below. It's the specialists that you're thinking of.
Yeah, I don't have any stats at hand but docs-in-training I know seem to see themselves as being somewhere around $200k in hock for all the training. And med. reimbursement is going to a scary place in the US. I worked in a medical practice and the dual specialist MD lost money on every patient due to insurance and overhead and abysmal medicare reimbursement. Clinical trials provided the practice's profit. Programming / engineering seems much more free.
Also don't forget debt. Most MDs and DDSs I know in the US have 350K+ of debt. On top of that, they have to worry about malpractice suits. The work is very demanding physically and emotionally. While I can work from home on a rainy day, a doctor can't.
"Entitled whining" is a bit harsh I agree, but I have to say that my reaction was along those lines as well. What do you suggest be done about the situation? The abstract "respect" term is not very useful. The investment bankers that you mention make a lot of money but they don't have a lot of respect right now, at least for some definition of the word.
You could say that we deserve higher salaries but in my opinion the free market works perfectly there. And in fact, the same applies to respect. It's not something you can force, people respect those who earn their respect. It's not adjusted for IQ, skills, worked hours etc.
Although one can get a programming "job" with little experience, or better yet just start programming with little more than a laptop and some free software - being a top-notch developer takes many Years of training.
As the computing industry and inherent complexity continue to grow, and as society relies more heavily upon it, we'll likely find similar barriers to entry. Programming is an infant relative to the practices of medicine, law, and other well established industries.
My ideal world is one in which everyone learns how to program along side math, science, language, and so on - just as we learn about health and civics, not to become doctors or lawyers but to become healthy members of society. If computers are to become an important part of human society, then programming them should be a part of the basic curriculum. The social respect of professional developers will surely grow as software development becomes better understood.
Not that I receive any lack of respect from my non-techie peers. But I certainly wouldn't mind being able to discuss my daily brain-benders with a stranger at the local watering hole-in-the-wall.
he does have a point. lawyers and doctors both work in industries that are protected. anybody can come off the street and start slinging code. you can't come off the street and start lawyering and doing surgery even if you were more capable than the average doctor or lawyer.
you can't come off the street and start lawyering and doing surgery
True, you can't do that now. But going back to what he says about the industrial era of America, you could do that in an earlier age. The software industry and culture is only in its infancy in America.
"""But how much work the software does is not what makes it remarkable. What makes it remarkable is how well the software works. This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved. Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors.
"""This software is the work of 260 women and men based in an anonymous office building across the street from the Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake, Texas, southeast of Houston. They work for the "on-board shuttle group," a branch of Lockheed Martin Corps space mission systems division, and their prowess is world renowned: the shuttle software group is one of just four outfits in the world to win the coveted Level 5 ranking of the federal governments Software Engineering Institute (SEI) a measure of the sophistication and reliability of the way they do their work. In fact, the SEI based it standards in part from watching the on-board shuttle group do its work."""
Perhaps change the law to make companies legally liable for software quality and losses arising from it. Even require software to meet a certain SEI ranking, depending on the industry. Of course you need a phase in process. Eventually, salaries for software workers would rise.
Even require software to meet a certain SEI ranking, depending on the industry.
Anyone who's worked with a CMM level 5 certified organization knows how laughable that suggestion is. On-board Shuttle Group are undoubtedly top-notch. But any random Bangalore bodyshop has CMM level 5 too.
CMM has 5 levels. CMM level 1 is where you operate right now: it denotes the ability to ship something. CMM level 5, the one mentioned in the interview from Kent Beck's book, denotes complete paralysis. To do anything, you have to write or update so many documents, have so many meetings with "relevant stakeholders", and to perform so many pointless measurements of the defects/LOC kind, that it's much more productive to just go postal and at least remove a CMM auditor or two from the face of the Earth in the process.
Levels 2 to 4 indicate various intermediate stages where paralysis is spreading, but you can still ship. For example, level 2 is called "Managed Process". "Managed Process is distinguished by the degree to which the process is Managed". I'm not making this up. There's a book called Capability Maturity Model Integration, and this book, heavy enough to kill a human, is full of this sort of stuff. Reading it is impossible.
But wouldn't salaries for software workers eventually rise? Accounting and legal rules are also books heavy enough to kill a human. My point is that government intervention is the reason solicitors and accountants salaries are so high. Exams are the reason teachers salaries are high. The same would be needed (e.g legislated and enforced CMM levels) for programmer salaries to rise.
> But wouldn't salaries for software workers eventually rise?
No.
Lawyers, accountants, and teachers can make a lot of money because people are willing to pay a lot of money for the services they provide, because those services are very valuable.
Paying a top-notch lawyer US$500 an hour can save you a huge multiple of that US$500 if you're being sued for US$500M. Paying a good accountant allows you to manage your business transparently enough that you can raise money on a stock market, thus getting 20 times the amount of cash you've made in profits. A four-year university education can lift you from the lower class into the middle class, adding millions to your earnings and a decade to your lifespan.
It turns out that developing software quickly is a very valuable activity. In a single day of work, a good programmer can write a piece of software that functions in production for years afterwards, serving dozens, hundreds, or millions of people. Often, this is even the case if the software is buggy; the alternatives (repetitive manual labor, spreadsheets built by amateurs) are often even less reliable.
If you tried to outlaw the development of unreliable software, programmer salaries would go the same place that salaries for nuclear plant engineers and designers of small planes have gone over the last three decades: overseas or into oblivion.
Worse, it would likely be counterproductive. What we need for more reliable software is not books of management rules but better abstractions, better theorem provers, better programming languages, better insights. Those things are themselves software, but they are probably not software that we can develop faster, or at all, under an SEI CMM Level 5 process.
This is because of the BAR and the AMA. If there was an equivalent group for programmers that could get equivalent regulation this would not be the case. I think a group like that would solve a lot of the issues OP brings up.
"The rest of folks are compensated at prevailing market rates for their technical skills -- and incidentally, American programmers are paid better than in almost any other country."
Not so. The supply of MDs, CPAs, and lawyers is kept artificially low by accreditation bodies.
Top lawyers aren't paid the most because
they know the law the best; that's ancillary.
They're paid big bucks because they win money
for their clients, prevent their clients from losing
money and build networks to people that have
money to give them.
Actually, the top people are called "rainmakers". These people are able to find, smooch and retain new customers. The technical people are the first to get laid off.
The core of your argument is entitled whining.
Computer programmers can make truckloads of money the same way that everyone else can: by seeking it. If your professional goals are aligned with making money, then your chances of making a lot of money go way up. Top lawyers aren't paid the most because they know the law the best; that's ancillary. They're paid big bucks because they win money for their clients, prevent their clients from losing money and build networks to people that have money to give them. Likewise, programmers who define their goals economically (which broadly includes creating value for users) have nearly unparalleled earning potential.
8 of the 20 richest people in America are (or have been, at least nominally) programmers.
The crux of things is that you don't get rich for being a skilled technician -- and I use that word broadly. Lawyers don't get rich for knowing the law, bankers don't get rich for understanding economics and programmers don't get rich for slinging code. You get rich by creating value (or at least tying yourself at an opportune moment to a benefactor whose goals are so aligned).
The rest of folks are compensated at prevailing market rates for their technical skills -- and incidentally, American programmers are paid better than in almost any other country.
But claiming that "computer programmers don't get respect" is broken on so many levels. First, computer programmers are certainly among the most respected trades. You need to interact with a broader cross-section of society if you believe that not to be the case. Second, the baseline for becoming a programmer isn't very high -- certainly nothing on the order of becoming a doctor or lawyer. The median programmer has jumped over far fewer hurdles than the median doctor or lawyer. (I got my first programming job at 17. I'd have needed another decade of non-trivial training before I'd have been able to get a job as a doctor.) The spectrum is far broader for programmers, and as such, the respect a programmer commands has more to do with their actual status within those ranks than simply being a part of that trade. But again, the spectrum extends up to "richest person in the world", so we're hardly being shafted.
If being respected among the elite is something that you want, align your goals with that. If it's not, enjoy the fact that you're in a trade where even untrained, mediocre practitioners reach the top 10% of American incomes.