[intelVISA]

Not an expert on PMs (is anyone?) but my understanding is the value to the business is, as you mentioned, abstracting the need to manage SWEs as value builders and instead as cogs within the Abstract Agile Machine, in this Sick Reality the PM is Programmer Remade and we are reduced to function calls. Software makes a lot of money and plenty of smarter people out there have invented roles to extract some of that (your) wealth without having to touch Vim.

Due to the relative novelty of CS I think we're still going through the early motions of trying to mesh together a web of programmers from bootcamps to MIT into one cohesive corporate apparatus... eventually we'll land on something similar to medicine or other engineering areas where accreditation is prerequisite and individual cogs have a bit more agency due to licensing etc. Hopefully.

My personal, unsubstantiated, take is that we'll come to look back on this odd time, with the glacial pace and grift hierarchy of enterprise software, as quaint. Some startups are coming around to the idea that you don't need 6 person multidisciplinary teams for generic CRUD, pay one competent engineer those 6 people's salaries and you'll get it built unless it's something special - in which case you pay that engineer 60x and their name is Bellard.

[pclmulqdq]

The PM ladder is undoubtedly there for MBAs to perform wealth extraction from you. And it works, for now.

If you see those "day in the life" videos going around Twitter/YT where the person literally does no work, it's always a PM. Sundar Pichai (and I think Satya Nadella too) came up through this ladder. It's a role for professional office politicians created under the guise that engineers can't figure out what to do for themselves.

[xivzgrev]

I don’t think the specialization of engineers is accidental.

I’ve worked at a number of companies and engineers are ALWAYS the limiting factor. Simply put, there’s a chronic shortage of people who can build valuable stuff.

I believe companies have sought to offload this bottleneck. Have engineers just build, and hire people to do everything else.

[ghaff]

Engineering accreditation (at least at the Professional Engineer level) is not that common in the US except in civil engineering. It's basically needed to sign off on designs etc. for regulators. (You also see it with consultants who give expert witness testimony, etc.)

[sarchertech]

Even for other engineering disciplines that don’t require a PE, it’s common to require an engineering degree from an ABET accredited program. Much more common than it is in software.

[ghaff]

I've never seen that myself but it's probably pretty common for companies to often effectively require a four-year degree from a school they've heard of--which probably boils down to more or less the same thing.

[sarchertech]

The ABET accreditation thing is interesting. Last time I looked into it there are even some things that require it for CS (becoming a patent lawyer for example).

Here's. the first job I found when I searched for local MechE jobs.

>This position requires a BSME or MSME from an ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission-approved program with a strong academic background and interest in thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid

https://www.monster.com/job-openings/-winter-2022-entry-leve...

When searching for local EE jobs. Out of the first 5 results, 1 required a PE, 3 required a degree from an ABET accredited program, and 1 just required an EE degree without specifying ABET.

>Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering or related degree from an ABET accredited program.

https://lensa.com/staff-electrical-engineer-substation-chatt...

[ceres]

> eventually we'll land on something similar to medicine or other engineering areas where accreditation is prerequisite

You are saying people will need to be certified to be programmers?

This is just gate keeping and considering how accessible computing is, it would never work anyway.

[intelVISA]

There already is gate keeping though, and that gate is manned by corporate which, ironically, is how so much bloat can sneak in at your expense.

I am not fond of gates either; for as long as your skill can produce capital value it will be gatekept in some capacity. I'd rather see that gate moved closer to our side if it must exist.

If gambits like Musk's prove successful then there is further precedent that lean engineering teams can still operate at scale - just with fewer layers of indirection and wealth extraction.