[hn_throwaway_99]

> Software development is vastly overpaid compared to how complex it is, imagine a 6 month Bootcamp for becoming a civil engineer.

If anything, I think the past couple years have belied the idea that you can become a competent software developer in 6 months. It is this "lowest level" dev work anyway that I see under the most pressure from outsourcing.

[znpy]

I think this is only partially true.

I think Software development is vastly overpaid for junior profiles but largely underpaid for senior profiles.

If you think how central some key people are to some companies and how much those companies make (gross product)... You'll see that some key developers are probably worth even more than CEOs.

This has been largely not understood, in my opinion.

[constantcrying]

Senior developers are harder to replace, but by no means are they underpaid.

Even if their contribution was significant, in most cases a replacement with the same competency could have been found.

[constantcrying]

A lot of development activities absolutely can be done by someone with 6 months of bootcamp.

Of course there are also things which you absolutely need significantly more knowledge for. But pretending that these two are the same thing, have the same title and roles is the actual issue.

[codegeek]

"absolutely can be done by someone with 6 months of bootcamp"

You forgot to add "with a lot of hand holding and guidance and that too if that 6 month bootcamper is competent enough and cares about learning on their own".

[constantcrying]

That is just true every time you have someone enter a totally new field of work.

Just compare it to engineering disciplines. Imagine a civil engineering bootcamp, 6 month of that, some motivation and coaching from your coworker is enough to evaluate the structural soundness of public infrastructure?

I think you completely underestimate how high the barrier to entry is for engineering disciplines compared to software development. The high pay for software engineers in the US is a phenomenon that is driven by absurdly high demand. For no other discipline is the barrier to entry so low and the reward so high, even outside of the US this isn't the case. In Europe software development is paid very differently.