[rednum]

> I suppose this is obvious but the traditional way of increasing prices is to lower the supply.

I've been thinking about this recently and it feels like the current culture in software engineering is to increase the supply. I see people who code and offer free coding lessons to their friends. Pre-covid there has been multiple meetups where I live in themed like "programming for no programmers" or "build your first app".

At the same time when I look at other high impact jobs, like lawyers or doctors, they seem to be keen on building moats around their profession. There are no "six week law bootcamps" that would give you useful skills or anything like that. I'm getting a feeling that engineers are unwittingly cutting the branch they sit on, but they will only realize this years from now when it's too late.

[ChuckMcM]

Pretty much, you've got the Bar that must be passed to practice law, and the Medical boards, that must be passed to practice medicine. Those barriers are established, nominally, to ensure a level of ability/quality across providers of medical or legal services. And yet they are not as successful at that mission than one would think given that it is allegedly their "primary" mission.

There is the professional engineer certification, and for a while people pushed the professional data processor, but it wasn't followed with statutory requirements (and penalties) for hiring uncertified individuals.

If anyone reading this is confused, I think it would be FABULOUS to have really strong self-policing certification authorities that would identify and kick out bad actors like various contractor licensing boards do. As long as those same agencies were not designed to structurally discriminate. CA, VT, WA, and VA allow you to take the bar exam without a law degree. If you learn the law on your own, you can take the exam and be licensed to practice law in any of those states. That is non-discriminatory. I would be in favor of something similar for "licensed" software engineers. Self study, trade school, university, any of them should be able to provide a path to becoming a SWE. What we're missing at the moment is some third party to identify those who have "arrived" vs those who are still on the path.