but i use ddg btw
this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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I think you are undervaluing a lot of work non-IT people do. I can work as an engineer doing almost the exact same thing as an analyst or programmer but not get paid the same amount. I can be a program manager that needs to adapt to a variety of situations where I have to make critical company facing decisions but I wont be paid like a programmer.
However, you are right that devs are treated like princesses because of their leverage. All i was asking was in a world where IT is conpetitive and less of value, would it make sense to pay them less if there is less expectation. It feels weird because you dont see that in almost any other field.
No, I'm not undervaluing anybody. I'm just trying to tell you that yes, if the field was less competitive, i.e. if much nor people were good at it, we'd see smaller median salaries.
I think it is comparable to the healtcare and medicine in the US, where being a doctor or a good lawyer pays you very well for exactly same reasons.
As for your example of being an engineer doing similar stuff as some programmer and being paid differently, well, no, the pay would be very comparable. I know several people doing programming work as stated by their job descriptions and contracts, both are paid less than a middle manager I know, because the duties they have to perform can be covered by a larger population compared to the duties that pay much, much more.
The situation you're talking about is already the case, and the only reason people see IT salaries as too big is because the field and the work is perceived to be somewhat easy and simply ("Don't you sit in front of the compute rall day?"), and while it can be easy in some regards (much easier and less physically demanding that being an first responder of any kind or working in a cargo or fishing vessel), but it's not simple most of the time. Same reasons engineers are often paid more than technicians or mechanics - both are extremely important, neither is simple, but have different capabilities to match the supply and demand of their industries.
If anything, it's not like we're the execs signing ourselves monthly $400,000 as a bonus and doing actually fuck all because we have powerful parents, neither are we trust fund managers or anything similar. These are the people we should be turning against, not fellow workers that don't have dozens and hundreds of millions of dollars.