Should we all become Software Engineers as a majority in society?

I am going to tell you a brief story at the end. I am not sure if this is the general story as I haven’t interviewed everyone, but it does feel a common point somewhat, to the many that I have talked about, across several tech companies of my decade+ software engineering journey.

There is a lot of hot buzz these days about being a Software Engineer. Software Engineering outsourcing has become 10-x* expensive compared to a decade ago. For e.g., you can not find quality outsourced Java Engineers for less than $3000/month these days, whereas a decade ago, you could have outsourced Java Engineers for $300/month in some part of the world. There are millions of Software Engineering jobs and millions more that will be created.

Everyday we hear stories that how software Engineering jobs are the coolest and create the new amazing riches. At the same time, there are millions of startups being created each year and they all need cheap/fast/quality resources for completing there product cycle. The average/median US (not outsource) software engineering salaries in last 10 years seems about the same with a few exceptions**.

The above has created some sort of rat race where everyone wants to become a software Engineer. There are more people dropping out of traditional colleges to do short courses on Web/Mobile frameworks to get into software engineering as fast as possible.

Since the demand for Software Engineering has risen so much, more and more people are dropping out of traditional degree courses in Software Engineering and self teaching themselves for a few months to get job ready and paid as Software Engineer in many startups/tech companies making real world softwares. Contrast this to neurosurgery, where an aspirant still needs to study 10+ years and complete a residency program to practice in real world professionally.

A sad story, a painter who is truly artistic is dropping his arts course altogether***, as he is also lured by the software engineering rat race as well.

Another biotech researcher, is dropping his course for the similar reason. Many more are dropping other passions, researches and long term struggles to adopt software engineering careers and see immediate results.

A life of Software engineer seems coolest of all with all the success stories of many and of new instant billionaire riches who created valued startups.

Well all the above are somewhat true, but not in its entirety if you see the life on the other side of the things for too long.

I realized I haven’t told you the story of the other side yet, but rather kept this post as an open ended question for you to decide? I will talk about the story in my next post. Till then, I would love to know your opinion.

What do you think? Should we all become Software Engineers as a society?

• *10x — One of my lecturer mentioned this, you will see this word much in use, a 10x productive Engineer? 10x profits? 10x performance?
• ** the median salaries being constant is dependent on many factors and is debatable including the lower barrier to entry as junior developers, company monopolies etc.
• *** who will finance a painter? chances are slim