[davee5]

Yes. The commodification of professional work is worth pointing out. I'm surprised by the percentage of people in this thread who think the SW industry is exceptional. It tells me a lot about the fictions people want to tell themselves in an industry that is still relatively novel.

By contrast I'm a HW builder (mechanical engineer / industrial designer / design manager). I make good comp but maybe 70% of what my similarly leveled colleagues in SW do. The vast majority of the arguments in here still apply to my work, with a little less focus on maintenance. And yet my job role's comp is in a slow decline. Why? Because it's fully commoditized.

Anecdote: I used to work for a HW focused VC leading their internal incubator/consultancy's physical design team. One of our ML focused investments got acquired for a ton of money and every other startup in the building wanted to know how well compensated the team was going to be. It's odd to see some people at the water cooler suddenly be worth millions when your startup is still grinding, it makes for stark contrast and a very real "what if" to the onlookers. One of the Sr MEs at a struggling startup was clearly jealous and lamented to me, "man, screw machine learning, how come nobody is paying me a million bucks for my work?" To which I said "let me ask you something, when you were studying mech-e in school, did you ever use steam tables?" yeah. "Did you learn about the Carnot cycle?" yeah. "Have you considered the fact that our industry is 200 years old? It stands to reason that our jobs are not hot shit anymore. Be glad you like your work and are still paid well; ignore the new kids if you can."