What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

I agree that it isn't useful to compare fields. Unfortunately, we have to. There is currently a huge amount of debate about whether there is a "shortage" of software developers. This implies some kind of market failure, that US citizens and permanent residents are not responding to the market signals that should be drawing more people into the field.

If we're going to have a meaningful discussion about this, then we more or less have to start to make these comparisons. Are people who have the freedom to chose their careers in the US behaving irrationally by choosing, law, medicine, finance, actuarial work, nursing, dental hygiene, and so forth over software development? A lot of people are surprised to hear that out in San Francisco (check BLS stats), the median salary for a software developer is roughly equivalent to a dental hygienist, notably less than for a registered nurse, and of course far less than the median for a doctor or lawyer. I don't object to higher salaries in these fields at all, but looking at the data, I'd say that any "shortage" is pretty easily explained as a rational response to pay, career security, working conditions, and the opportunity to do meaningful work that helps others.

I don't see how you can answer this question without comparing the fields.

As you can probably tell, I'm skeptical of almost all claims of a "shortage", regardless of industry. I don't dismiss it as a market impossibility the way some people do - I do believe that cultural and educational problems can lead to "shortages", but I do think we need to be very, very careful about analyzing it.

Software is a tough one to analyze, because anyone can call themselves a programmer (or even an engineer, most places) after reading a book on php (or not reading it and just saying they did). But yeah, I do think that someone with the analytical and logical reasoning ability to program, the reading comprehension to wade through dense technical material, and the persistence to keep at it until he or she can actually write, adapt, and maintain a code base… yes, I do think that person is almost certainly capable of handling the academic work at the median level in more or less every profession.

I'm exactly the same age as you.

You may very well be right about how people make career decisions. What you've described sounds closer to how this actually happens. Very few people sit down with a spreadsheet, estimating salaries, working conditions, job security, likelihood of various outcomes, factor in their own risk tolerance, and take whatever comes out as the decision. Many people don't even engage in a similar but less mechanical version of this. So yes, in that sense, I agree.

I do think you may be underestimating the extent to which the traditions you describe may be a distillation of what I described above, though, almost a kind of heuristic. A kids sees that his uncle is a member of profession X, lives in a nice house, enjoys his work, realizes it's a good match with his own personality, and is drawn to it. Parents are aware that certain fields are a path to the middle (perhaps upper) middle classes and nudge their own kids toward them (or rule with an iron fist and practically force them to).

This is why, as I said above, I am open to the concept of a shortage, that I don't dismiss it outright the way some economists do (where a shortage simply indicates disconnect between supply and demand - as with all things, supply rises and demand diminishes at higher salary/price levels until the market reaches equilibrium).

I do see human choices, including career choices, as more personal and cultural - I wouldn't call them irrational, which implies a notable lack of reason, but they are not the result of cut and dried reasoning. I am open to the possibility that these cultural and personal decision can leave young people - especially in situations where new valid professions have arrived within the span of a half generation - unaware of or uninterested in things that are actually very, very good options.

But like I said, I'm only open to this, I'm not willing to conclude that this is what is happening without looking at the data for a particular field. People may be overlooking a field that would be a very rational and wise career choice - or, alternatively, they may be rationally and wisely avoiding a field because far better options for people with their skill and academic mindset exist elsewhere.

My conclusion is that while it isn't wildly irrational to go into software development, the overall pay, working conditions, and job security ultimately do fall short of the kind of options available to people who are capable of going into it. We are a field where 44 year olds like us often (but by no means always) work in open offices with back visibility, experience issues with age discrimination, work in (corrupted) "agile" or "scrum" teams that prevent long term thinking or meaningful autonomy, and at the median in SF (ground zero for the "shortage") earn only roughly the same salary as a dental hygienist, and considerably less than a registered nurse. Sometimes our work is important, but often we are just migrating data from peoplesoft to oracle and back again, (marching UP and DOWN the squaaaaare![1]), or making the thingy look like the other thingy and work with this other thingy (please estimate the time it will take for our schedule tracking software and update your progress!). This may seem like an unfair characterization, and I would certainly agree that there are far more interesting jobs in software development out there, but some of the loudest voices insisting that there is a shortage of developers clearly are just looking for ways to pay people less to march up and down the square.

Every time I say this, it is important to me to point out that I have absolutely no objection whatsoever to nurses earning good salaries, or earning more at the median than software developers in San Francisco. They do an important and hard job, and I absolutely believe they earn those salaries. What I won't do is act like there's some mysterious cultural factor in why young people are not going into software development in the numbers that silicon valley employers would like them to.

This isn't about making it cool, or simply helping people realize the opportunities that are out there. There's some pretty deep structural change that needs to happen before people with choice in the US will consider software development a better option than the other paths available to free and full citizens who have the right to pick their own educational and career path in a labor market.

[1] monty python reference

It's essentially impossible for a lawyer to lose their license.

That's not true at all. Engineers with basic hygiene and fitness are snapped up like doctors. Don't compare 23 yr old engineers with doctors who, after school and training, are already 30 and in their high innome jobs.

Law is only 7 years training and the first 4 are in any field you choose. And there are opportunities for paid semipro internships every summer.