[michaelochurch]

Your first article is based on faulty economics.

No. I'm not saying that software engineers should earn $700,000+ or that any reasonable economic model would have them at that level-- because never in the history of economics has one's labor being worth something to the employer been, alone, enough to justify floating it to that rate. I'm only saying that their value to the businesses that employ them is at least that high.

Applied to software, the reason engineers aren't capturing most of that value is because all engineers are getting more productive. The benefit is accruing instead to those who employ engineers and those who use & purchase software.

Then it seems like software engineers should unionize or professionalize. If there's no other way for them to get even a small fraction of their value to the business, then collective action is the best approach.

[nostrademons]

I doubt a union would get much traction as long as the software industry is in as much flux as it is in, and boundaries between engineers, entrepreneurs, and financiers are as porous as they are. It's not uncommon for someone to be an engineer for a few years, a technical cofounder for a few more years, and then a venture capitalist later on. Many, many people in tech (Andreesen, PG, John Doerr, Eugene Kleiner, Bill Joy) have sat in all 3 seats.

[sawthat]

Actually it's incredibly uncommon. There are hundreds of thousands of engineers, far fewer "technical cofounders" and even fewer venture capitalists.