[delibes]

I'll focus on the professional salaries...

"Uncle" Bob Martin gave an interesting talk in London last night about the need for a professional body for software.

Doctors have the American Medical Association (or BMA here in the UK). Lawyers have the American Bar Association (I think the Law Society is the UK equivalent). They can regulate their profession, ensuring standards, controlling membership through certification, and raising the value/cost of the members.

Perhaps he's right, and we'd benefit from the same in software?

http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2015/11/27/OathDiscussi...

[cookiecaper]

The AMA and the ABA end up performing the function of unions in attempting to guarantee a rough wage floor by artificially constraining supply. One of the ways they do this is by working to ensure that the barriers to entry in the field are artificially high.

I believe that licensing and authoritative standards bodies are inevitable in software engineering, but I think it will radically change the face of the programming job market, removing many of its most attractive qualities. It will be a very dark day, and the end of the era of the self-taught programmer, when something like the American Software Engineering Association gets to set the rules.

[kjdal2001]

I saw him give the same talk in Chicago, and the impression that I got was that the body he was advocating for had nothing to do with salaries. The AMA and the Bar might increase salaries by creating scarcity in their professions, but they aren't salary negotiating organizations like a union.

[jazzyk]

We don't need a union, but a professional body representing us would do wonders. Merely sorting out the H1B visa mess (not necessarily eliminating) would help salaries.

My wife is an architect (residential) and her clients cannot tell her to take a shortcut which violates the Building Code.

I'd love to be able to say "no" to some stupid, short-sighted requests I get from clients. Without a professional organization behind me - I can't, because I will be deemed "difficult" and lose the business.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

That's a totally different issue though.

Even if your wife thinks it's good idea to violate the building Code in some isolated case, she still can't legally do it.

You're just looking for someone to back you up because you think your client is short-sighted. You'd have equal leverage to your wife's if your software was processing data in a regulated industry and a client asked you to do something against regulations.