We live in an ecosystem where we (engineers/developers) can promote ourselves and display our skills/acumen/values/professionalism/responsibility in an unequivocal way. Regardless of your experience level.
I bootstrapped myself from poverty to Staff software engineer, past the age of 45.
Is that privileged? Or sheer will and force of effort?
Privilege, yes. You had the privilege to dedicate time to learning skills required, obtaining an education, probably bias during hiring processes, etc.
Even though your position might be the result of effort on your part, you do have to acknowledge that you’re privileged to be in a position to expend that effort on what you want, instead of something else, like finding fresh water daily, or whatever. It’s not sheer will that you were born in a (even marginally) more favorable environment than others.
The term “privilege” here doesn’t just mean a trust fund nepo baby.
How far could you reduce this down? Do you only clap for malnourished Ethiopian babies that can't find waterthat grow up into full silicon Valley software engineers?
To the people subscribing to "privilege theory", all positive differences are privilege and all negative differences are oppression, no matter if earned or self inflicted.
That's the logical conclusion you're forced to arrive at if you take these people seriously.
You can be dismissive all you want, but the point is to acknowledge you don’t understand everyone’s situation and you can’t make sweeping generalizations like “I did it and I can judge you if you _didn’t_ do it”.
You can also acknowledge that most people abandon their principles long before they are anywhere close to starving and will not be harmed (physically) by being reminded of that.
OK how about some real achievements in life, is raising kids the hard way? Career is but a small portion of QoL and overall achievements as human beings, basically all of us software devs these days live have very above-average incomes although most feel like they are deserved or even not enough. So studying from poverty to software is an achievement and big move, usually, but what specific position afterwards is not that important or impressive, its just a question of a) mental capacity, mostly genetic and b) effort put into work, while not elsewhere.
Ie I increased my salary, doing same job, all 100% perm position, roughly 30x compared to my first fulltime software dev job after university. Who cares? It doesn't mean anything, just an afterthought. I am father of 2 small kids, and trying my best to be a good father and role model, often succeeding, sometimes failing. Its by far the hardest effort of my life, it takes relentless 20-25 years and I see otherwise brilliant folks failing at this hard left and right.
Also I wish folks in IT were a bit more humble and considered other engineering careers, with +- same effort taking to get a degree, and much worse career progress/compensation/freedom to choose one's path. Arrogance is much more rare there.
Hacker news is full of people having given up, building torment nexii and coping/rationalizing _incredibly_ hard.
So while I agree that privilege is certainly a factor, so is what I've just said.
A lot of people here live very cushy lives that cushion them from very pointy thoughts and questions.
As someone who too has to live in this world, I'd rather they didn't.
Highly paid enginners hiding behind "I have no choice I would be hungry" are usually just lying to themselves.
And you dont even get these nearly as often from people who work in lower paid positions. Or who are actually making moral tradeoffs that affects their income.
I have seen engineers take paycut or risk it because of this or that moral conviction. Not wanting to lie to customer, refusing job for gambling company, working one day less per week so that he volunteers for biblical something.
Just telling management no or just communicating about your work with ai or lack of it are not even one of those.
When I was starting out in my career it was "take the first job offer that comes along or starve/become homeless" so no, sometimes the personal cost would be unreasonably high to expect of anyone
This effectively does mean that I was not a moral actor at the time
I bootstrapped myself from poverty to Staff software engineer, past the age of 45.
Is that privileged? Or sheer will and force of effort?
I am not unique. I am an example.