If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?

At least in the U.S., there is no effective pressure by the profession to keep the number of practicing lawyers low.

I think you make several excellent points, and I unexpectedly found myself agreeing with you. I thought $150k was a lot of money, but had never stopped to think about the fact that the other alumni of my school who became doctors are making far more.

I think the reason we're seeing this is that programming has been commoditized quite successfully by an industry that saw they needed programmers but that did not know how to judge the quality of a programmer. Doctors certainly vary greatly in quality, but doctors are unionized after a fashion by the AMA, and they have managed to put into place artificial supply controls (regulation and licensure) that keep incomes higher.

The software development industry has gone the other way- instead of limiting the number of programmers (not necessarily a good thing, but it would boost incomes) we've developed quite a bit of process to try and make programmers interchangeable. I'm talking about much of the "best practice" and even the entire attitude that programmers should not be "lone guns" but part of a homogenous collective of coders. Everything from pair programming to test driven development to code reviews serves the process of making programmers homogenous and interchangeable, and thus more easily replaceable.

I also think that the Legal and Medical and Finance professions have developed for centuries in an environment where they were able to artificially limit the number of practitioners, and artificially boost the "Establishment credibility" that they received. I don't think most politicians are lawyers because lawyers are good leaders, but because lawyers were able to establish that career path as one of their own.

Software development, in contrast, is much newer, and currently is much closer to a free market.

In my opinion, software is a risky business, like hollywood. You probably can act better than Depp but you are struggling because you have not yet been noticed or given an opportunity.

Your best bet is to love doing what you are doing - acting or programming. Also plan your life according to what you are making and be content. Leave the rest to fate.

I think one of the reasons programmers are not paid as much is that by and large, we are seen as interchangeable cogs. There are definitely exceptions, but I think the companies that think this way are large enough to set the market rate. For example, I used to work for a large defense company that probably had more software engineers than every startup in the world combined (we hired 10% of all CS graduates in the country every year). The prevailing attitude was to pay as little as they could get away with because there is always some new naive college CS grad to replace those who left.

I think reason #5 is a big one. Most of my friends in banking, law, etc know they are trading happiness for money, and accept that.