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.
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.