[aor215]

I used to think the same. I too find my job to be easy and sometimes feel like we have this secret in the software industry that our work really isn't all that difficult these days, with so many hard problems having already been solved. I say this as a senior SDE in big tech.

But, after watching a close friend, who is brilliant—she had gone to a top 30 college undergrad and had top SAT scores—go to a coding bootcamp (the same one I went to) and fail to switch careers I started to think differently. For some reason, I find the work easy and interesting, but many others do not.

I do agree that many more people are capable of becoming developers than choose to do so. But this fact may not be as interesting as it sounds. Many people just don't like coding. Many just don't want to spend their days writing code, even if it pays well.

I don't mean to downplay irrational reasons why people choose not to pursue software. The industry still has a lot of negative stereotypes about what the work is actually like that prevent people from giving it a try, but, more and more, I've noticed that, even among people who know such stereotypes are false, many just don't want to do the job, even if they could.

[blindmute]

I just find it hard to believe that the typical office worker likes their job enough to do that, but would find software development at ~double their salary not worth it. People don't want to spend their days in Excel either, but millions do.