This isn’t a great injustice only to programmers, but instead to all “non-bullshit” contributors to society. But this is a problem with our brand of capitalism, not with software engineering careers.
Let me explain. Ask a teacher, police officer, or firefighter if they are paid proportional to the value they add. Ask a great professor who has educated Nobel laureates whether they are paid even 20% more than their mediocre colleague who can’t even give a lecture to students.
Instead, most people are paid for political reasons or due to closeness to market transactions. For example, stock brokers don’t add much value to society overall, but are very close to market transactions for pricey financial instruments, and so they can skim off them. CEOs of BigCo’s are paid well for the obvious political reason: they sit on the board of a company with the people (board members) who set their salary.
----------------------------
This isn’t a great injustice only to programmers, but instead to all “non-bullshit” contributors to society. But this is a problem with our brand of capitalism, not with software engineering careers.
Let me explain. Ask a teacher, police officer, or firefighter if they are paid proportional to the value they add. Ask a great professor who has educated Nobel laureates whether they are paid even 20% more than their mediocre colleague who can’t even give a lecture to students.
Instead, most people are paid for political reasons or due to closeness to market transactions. For example, stock brokers don’t add much value to society overall, but are very close to market transactions for pricey financial instruments, and so they can skim off them. CEOs of BigCo’s are paid well for the obvious political reason: they sit on the board of a company with the people (board members) who set their salary.