Depends on the country. The average software engineer wage in the UK (about 56,000 a year), France (about the same) or Greece (25,000 a year) is probably rather solidly in the middle class, and at the lower end of it at that.
A software engineer/developer/programmer/whatever is paid about the same as your average office employee in much of Europe.
I think the grandparent is playing a little loose with terms. By "working class", I believe they mean both: have to exchange their labour for money, and low social class (less respect from peers, say at a dinner party).
Though obviously some software engineers "cash out" and then don't _need_ to work anymore, and many doctors would quickly run out of money if they stopped working.
Keep in mind that there's lots of different definitions of classes.
Software reasonably fits in as a white collar job, which is working class.
In general it's probably more interesting to discuss the various things people use to differentiate roles than it is to argue about what words should be used to describe the roles.
I agree that "working class" has typically, in the US at least, referred to blue collar workers.
OTOH, as more and more blue collar type jobs are being obsoleted by machines, I think we're coming up upon a more modern definition of working class: those who do not derive profits from their actual value-add.
For example, most other 'professional' type jobs - finance, law, medicine, etc. - typically have a well defined career path where you're used and abused when young, but typically get to share in the profits once you make partner or senior level.
OTOH, most engineers will max out at about $100K-$160K based on location, and will never share in any profits or income. Realize that Google and Facebook are not typical when you consider the millions of engineers working in mostly typical cost-based positions for insurance companies, banks, and other non SV companies.
Obviously, $150K is much better than the other 'service' workers making half that, but we're moving closer and closer to becoming a 'working-class' type profession instead of one that's respected /w regard to both pay and societal treatment.
There's a big gulf between wage earners and everyone else, but, as I said to the other guy, the professional class and manual laborers don't have identical interests (for instance, which group is more likely to support a free-trade agreement that will cause US factories to shutter but drive down the prices of consumer goods?).
Considering your setup, on what side do you think most software engineers would fall? The elites who have "made it" at Google and Facebook might be fine, but those factories employ tens of thousands of software engineers and programmers in addition to tens of thousands of skilled manufacturing workers. They both lose their jobs when those factories close.
Engineering (all engineering, not just software engineering) is somewhere between a trade and a profession; too skilled and intellectually rigorous for the former but lacking the status of the latter.
It's not that eccentric. For instance, Marx didn't look just at what the job involved but at the terms of employment. In his terms, programmers making some of the highest salaries are still working class because they are paid a wage by a corporation. A plumber operating a business by would be middle class in the same system (they are working for themselves).
There are ways in which those distinctions are much more interesting than wage levels (which tend to dominate "class" discussion in the US).
Well, Marx has more nuanced categories than just wage earners and capitalists. The professional class doesn't have class interests that are identical to those of manual laborers.
From the number of women interested in dating him, that's where. Women go gaga to date a doctor, but they're about as interested in a software engineer as they are a plumber.
I'm not debating the work and how it compares to other professions, or even how the pay compares, I'm just pointing out what I perceive to be society's perception of the prestige of the profession. Here in America, software does not have a lot of prestige, not compared to doctors and lawyers.
Lawyers don't even make that much money, and a lot of them drop out and change professions; we have a glut of lawyers. The ones at the top make a lot, but your rank-and-file ones don't, they probably do worse than your average software engineer. But it doesn't matter: society holds them and doctors in far higher esteem than engineers or programmers of any kind. It's a product of America's anti-intellectual tradition.
Now of course, there is a big factor of relativity involved: if a woman is a waitress or secretary or cashier, for instance, she'll probably be very interested in dating an engineer or programmer (doubly so if she's a single mom struggling to raise some kids). But if she's a lawyer or doctor or she has the traits necessary to attract a doctor, she won't be. If she's an engineer herself, she probably would be interested, but since she's such a minority in her field she'll also have her pick of male engineers and won't be single long.
I mean that I don't see as great a number of lawyers and doctors having little interest in their personal appearance and constantly referencing science fiction and fantasy, which I think explains it as well as any supposed lack of social status for software engineering as a profession.
Besides that, I don't see how you can really justify calling medicine or law "less intellectual" than engineering or programming.
That's not true at all. Engineers with basic hygiene and fitness are snapped up like doctors. Don't compare 23 yr old engineers with doctors who, after school and training, are already 30 and in their high innome jobs.
A software engineer/developer/programmer/whatever is paid about the same as your average office employee in much of Europe.