What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

We pay taxes in the US as well :-) Maybe a bit less than in Europe, but we get very little in return (no subsidized daycare, no 30 days of vacation, etc). US tax revenue is mostly spent on maintaining all the 170+ military bases around the world, aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons, etc.

I agree that "working class" has typically, in the US at least, referred to blue collar workers.

OTOH, as more and more blue collar type jobs are being obsoleted by machines, I think we're coming up upon a more modern definition of working class: those who do not derive profits from their actual value-add.

For example, most other 'professional' type jobs - finance, law, medicine, etc. - typically have a well defined career path where you're used and abused when young, but typically get to share in the profits once you make partner or senior level.

OTOH, most engineers will max out at about $100K-$160K based on location, and will never share in any profits or income. Realize that Google and Facebook are not typical when you consider the millions of engineers working in mostly typical cost-based positions for insurance companies, banks, and other non SV companies.

Obviously, $150K is much better than the other 'service' workers making half that, but we're moving closer and closer to becoming a 'working-class' type profession instead of one that's respected /w regard to both pay and societal treatment.

The dataset probably has a huge error margin. In my observations, the factor in Bulgaria is almost 4 and in Romania it is something like 3-3.2.

They exist to keep their own wages artificially high. Honestly, I think half my freshman Chem. I lecture of 500 students was pre-med. Only about 1/20 of them ended up in medical school, due to the artificial limits imposed by the AMA. We have a huge lack of doctors in the US due to the boomer generation getting older, but the medical school enrollment has not increased.

In fact, the AMA was originally founded to keep mid-wives from taking a cut of their most lucrative child-birthing business. They are one of the biggest lobbying organizations in the country after the military industrial complex. Along with the Bar Association, Teachers and Police Unions, and financial organizations, the AMA proudly proclaims that their goal is to enforce 'quality' standards for the good of the public. Don't fall for the spin.

We software engineers currently lack the social intelligence to realize how bad we're getting screwed, which is ironic considering the technical prowess we've collectively got.

There is no need for onerous restrictions they place on admittance. It used to be that you became a lawyer by apprenticing in a lawyer's office and reading the text of the law. That's how lawyers came up for generations until the post-secondary boom in the 1950s. Now, that time-tested method is illegal in all but a small handful of states due to ABA guidelines.

Of course, the superficial justification is that if you don't go to school for 8 years and pay $150k+ into the education industry before you can get a crack at real work, then it's because you're a fraud who wants to fleece the general populous. There is obviously going to be a surface justification. However, many lawyers are still primarily interested in fleecing people, and the artifical barriers to entrance probably only serve to further incentivize it; that's a big chunk of debt hanging over one guy's head.

Suppose he wanted to undercut his competition and offer meaningful legal services that a normal person could actually afford; oops, he needs to bill $200/hr because after overhead, 65% of that goes to his student loan payments. :|

However, I'm sure that the ABA and AMA do not function at all like unions and are run by truly beautiful people with stunningly pure hearts who would never put their own self-interest above the general welfare. I am sure the strength of their character fully precludes any attempt to keep competition low and/or to make the minimum viable price point of the profession artificially high. Such a thing would serve only to enrich them and their compatriots while blanket disqualifying large chunks of people that would otherwise make great lawyers and/or doctors, and of course, the people in charge would never even fathom something like that.