That's uncharitable. They exist to keep quacks away - both professions are extremely sensitive and prone to fakery.
>They exist to keep quacks away No, actually they don't. Chiropractors are still practicing, and in huge numbers, and probably gaining in popularity, and they don't just do chiropractic these days, they also do homeopathy, "supplements", and various other bogus remedies. "Naturopathic" doctors are also a big thing. There's no shortage of quackery in the medical field.
They were forced by govt to do that, after a century of resisting.
I feel like there are some confounding factors here beyond just the work itself
I'm not debating the work and how it compares to other professions, or even how the pay compares, I'm just pointing out what I perceive to be society's perception of the prestige of the profession. Here in America, software does not have a lot of prestige, not compared to doctors and lawyers. Lawyers don't even make that much money, and a lot of them drop out and change professions; we have a glut of lawyers. The one…
I mean that I don't see as great a number of lawyers and doctors having little interest in their personal appearance and constantly referencing science fiction and fantasy, which I think explains it as well as any supposed lack of social status for software engineering as a profession.
Besides that, I don't see how you can really justify calling medicine or law "less intellectual" than engineering or programming.
While there is a segment of autodidacts, it's not like people can become expert software developers overnight. Software developers work longer hours. I've never been in an environment where developers hang their coats up at 5:00 and go on with their carefree lives. And while unemployment may be low in IT, developers do not enjoy job security.
> I've never been in an environment where developers hang their coats up at 5:00 and go on with their carefree lives. And I've always worked in environments where they do. Anecdata for the win?
Same here. I've always worked more or less 8 hour days with occasional exceptions for emergencies and crunch time to hit a deadline.
How does that help things? I can easily find you a licensed chiropractor who will "diagnose" your ailments by just pushing down on your outstretched arm while holding a supplement or homeopathic remedy in front of you to determine if that supplement will fix the problem or not. I won't even get into "subluxations". And because that chiropractor is licensed by the State, the State government is explicitly endorsing th…
There is an argument that this is an in-demand service that will be practiced legitimately or illegitimately. Thus, instead of providing the atmosphere for a black market, the state licenses practitioners so that some standards can be enforced and so that it has a way to prevent known-harmful quacks from practicing.
Doctors and lawyers have created their own barriers to entry via the AMA and Bar Association. Honestly, I don't think I've ever met a decent software engineer that wouldn't have the intelligence to make it through either medical or law school, should they apply themself. OTOH, I've met numerous doctors and lawyers that would never be able to handle the typical high-level math and CS courses a decent undergrad require…
Developers can retire by late 30's if the wages right now keep up with inflation. Using conservative Google compensation: 22 yrs: L3, $160k total comp 25 yrs: L4, $210k total comp 27 yrs: L5, $260k total comp 32 yrs: L6, $320k total comp 39 yrs: L6, $320k total comp Averages: 22-25: $180k avg 25-27: $230k avg 27-32: $280k avg 32-39: $320k avg 3 * 180 + 2 * 230 + 5 * 280 + 7 * 320 = 4.64 mil 4.64 mil * 0.6 (taxes/FICA…
Not to mention, you can easily retire on a third of that if you're willing to move to Asia or Eastern Europe.
Is it meaningful to compare the median annual income of software engineers to the average annual income of the general population? I'm legitimately curious, what is the statistical significance of an average versus a median?
It's statistics 101 to not compare median to average, simply because an average is more impacted by outlier values and so a member of the general population making $15m a year would lift the "average" income far more than it would lift the "median" income. The numbers set "1, 2, 3, 4, 1000" has an average of 202 but a median of 3, and 3 is clearly a better representation of those numbers as a group. Also we've got mu…
It's not necessarily wrong to compare the median to the average once a sufficiently large dataset is reached given LLN, but I'd argue that a z-score is still far too basic to capture the nuances of such a varying dataset with so many points. Some type of hierarchical model would probably be best for this dataset.
The things you mention -- gatekeepers with teeth -- are a nightmare. They have eviscerated the medical and legal professions to the point of self-parody. They exist to keep otherwise qualified people out explicitly because they want to keep their wages high.
I don't want some yutz who came out of a ten week medical bootcamp doing rude things to my corpus.
Are you aware that medical schools are largely pass/fail with a 95%+ graduation rate? Makes it hard for me to have any confidence in the credential whatsoever.
In comparison, over 20% of my freshman CS class flunked out before 3rd year and there were still plenty of subpar students that made it to the finish line.
Both arithmetic mean and median are averages, so unless they specify what average they used for the annual income, you may only assume what the author meant. EDIT: Never mind, the author also says: >Moreover, we compare median annual values for software engineers with mean annual values for the general population
I'd appreciate a link to anyone, anywhere, at any time, using the word average to refer to the median. The median is the middle, not the average, and often nowhere near the average.
This is standard statistical terminology, where "average" is a general term used to describe a central tendency of data. Canonical example averages are arithmetic mean, median, mode.
In popular usage, this has become muddled because the arithmetic mean is also an estimate of the peak/center of a Gaussian distribution from a sample distribution.
Note that "arithmetic mean" is what you colloquially call "average" and think of as "the mean" but it is not in any way the only "mean", either.
It's statistics 101 to not compare median to average, simply because an average is more impacted by outlier values and so a member of the general population making $15m a year would lift the "average" income far more than it would lift the "median" income. The numbers set "1, 2, 3, 4, 1000" has an average of 202 but a median of 3, and 3 is clearly a better representation of those numbers as a group. Also we've got mu…
It's not necessarily wrong to compare the median to the average once a sufficiently large dataset is reached given LLN, but I'd argue that a z-score is still far too basic to capture the nuances of such a varying dataset with so many points. Some type of hierarchical model would probably be best for this dataset.
Fair point on the z-score still to simple but better than a ratio.
As far as the LLN, also right but this assumes that PayScale has anywhere close to enough datapoints for that number to be reached which I would question. Also not sure if we can consider the LLN in the same way if you are comparing a total population with a sample here?
That I guess is the other compounding factor actually, the population of Software Engineers is actually just a sample of the overall population of "the general public's income" and so that does impact this as well. We're not comparing group A to group B but rather group A to group ABC...N.
How does that help things? I can easily find you a licensed chiropractor who will "diagnose" your ailments by just pushing down on your outstretched arm while holding a supplement or homeopathic remedy in front of you to determine if that supplement will fix the problem or not. I won't even get into "subluxations". And because that chiropractor is licensed by the State, the State government is explicitly endorsing th…
There is an argument that this is an in-demand service that will be practiced legitimately or illegitimately. Thus, instead of providing the atmosphere for a black market, the state licenses practitioners so that some standards can be enforced and so that it has a way to prevent known-harmful quacks from practicing.
You could make that argument about a bunch of things: prostitution, drugs, auto mechanics, etc. But I don't see much push to license these things rather than criminalize them or ignore them. Drugs cost society a huge amount in many ways, but there's been no push to license that until just recently with marijuana. Mechanics aren't licensed, though they do have a totally private certification system. How many people have died from bad chiropractors, compared to cars breaking down (not so much now, but in the old days this was probably a problem) or using tainted illegal drugs? And how many people have died by going to chiropractors or other such quacks instead of real doctors? Steve Jobs is a good example of the latter.