[cbozeman]

What's weird about software engineering is you can literally be on all three ladders.

That high-paid 60 year old man working for his state's labor department keeping the COBOL churning out unemployment checks? High-skill labor.

That university researcher who's working night and day to design a new machine learning paradigm? She's an elite creative (Hell, she might even be a Ph.D. and a blue check mark nowadays).

The Stanford / UCLA / MIT dropout who builds the next Uber / Instagram / Twitter / Facebook? Working rich. At least until he/she sells the company to someone and bails out.