[grapeskin]

I know people that transferred from psychology degrees to programming jobs strictly through being self taught and they're making just shy of six figures. I know people who got web development jobs right out of high school.

Programming is infinitely easier to get into than any other high paying field. There's no standardized exam or certification board keeping people out. The problem is people need time to study it, and a lot of big companies very much have old boys networks thriving within them. Look at how many people are handed money to make a startup a year or two into Stanford, then hire a bunch of people who also went to Stanford or MIT, then put up 8 stage interviews spread across weeks for anyone who tries joining the company later.

It's honestly weird how some programmers get uncomfortable when it's stated that, yes, loads of people are self-taught. HN has nearly daily blog posts about people who studied in middle school and started a small company in high school and did fine for life, or someone who did a coding boot camp at 30 and got a fine job in a couple months after having zero experience beforehand. I mean, HN even gets literal kids (14 year olds) posting their apps--and sometimes they're actually good.

Nobody is doing that with the medical field or flying. Not everyone is going to make a world-class search engine after a few weeks in their basement. But a low double digit percentage of people could do programming in a workplace setting with good management if they had the opportunity to study. I had friends who got straight Ds in high school who are doing just fine with programming. They won't top leetcode charts, but they can make stuff.

[lr4444lr]

When you take an intro CS class, just like Chem 101, you see a huge separation of people who "get it" from those who don't in the midterm exam score distribution. I realize you may know some diamonds in the rough who emerged later, but if the average residential college student with the time, lack of other obligations, ability to pass admissions to the school, and the mental suppleness of his age can't learn this stuff like a breeze, I don't think you should so easily dismiss the difficulty barrier.

I think also if you could practice medicine without a license and call yourself "doctor", you'd see a LOT more self taught people doing that who have maybe the capacity of a medical assistant, the brighter ones perhaps performing as well as a junior PA.

[goodpoint]

> Programming is infinitely easier to get into than any other high paying field

Being an average programmer is indeed easy compared to many skilled jobs. In some areas people are called "senior" after doing a 6-months bootcamp and landing a job copypasting stack overflow for 3 years.

Being a good software engineer is a different thing and takes endless learning.

[giraffe_lady]

We aren't talking about what it takes to be a good one though, just to be one. Your last sentence is true of literally any work or skill one chooses to master. And choosing mastery isn't required in any of them, there are other optimizations available.