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by guntars
3052 days ago
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The compensation is not based on how hard the job is so it doesn't matter. There's a limited amount of people that can do programming, but also limited amount of people that can do safety-critical engineering. Perhaps there is some overlap. But can you engineer a bridge that's used by a billion people every day? Probably not, hence the salary differences. |
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Well, yeah. That's what I'm saying. And so is the original article.
"...so it doesn't matter."
This does not follow. Maybe it does matter, but the market is irrational. For example: maybe there are a lot of highly-paid, under-utilized software engineers sitting around FaceGooAmaSoft, because FaceGooAmaSoft are terrified of what those people might do, if they weren't twiddling their thumbs and enjoying complimentary massages while eating catered lunches.
"There's a limited amount of people that can do programming, but also limited amount of people that can do safety-critical engineering. Perhaps there is some overlap. But can you engineer a bridge that's used by a billion people every day? Probably not, hence the salary differences."
Prove your claim. Most programmers making big salaries are affecting maybe hundreds of thousands of people a day, at best. It's pretty rare to find gigs where you affect even millions of people a day. Even inside GooAmaFaceSoft, those are coveted positions, with lots of cookie-licking and internal politics.
It seems more plausible to me that the market is where it is because of deep pockets and a willingness to engage in defensive spending, more than any kind of individual productivity. But yeah, this isn't an argument that is going to flatter most HN readers.