Programmers are one of the true few workers that act as alchemists of labor (much like lawyers) in that because nobody really understands what they do, they can command incredibly high salaries and then never deliver a single useful product as long as they claim to be 'working on it'.
I have friends who have been working on the same product for three years and have only made paltry advances in it, but have been paid three to four times my yearly salary despite the fact that I produce a product that people actually use on a day to day basis. There is no money in production or refinement of existing production processes only in endless, useless development on extravagant moonshot boondoggles.
Part of this is that tech companies, after establishing a steady growth model, are often structured around fishing for moonshots. Google is one that does this. They throw devs at various ideas and kill the work if they don't believe the product will be a billion dollar idea, but that decision can take years. This is part of why Google has such a large graveyard of useful projects. And we don't even see the ones they killed before they became external.
Programmers are one of the true few workers that act as alchemists of labor (much like lawyers) in that because nobody really understands what they do, they can command incredibly high salaries and then never deliver a single useful product as long as they claim to be 'working on it'.
I have friends who have been working on the same product for three years and have only made paltry advances in it, but have been paid three to four times my yearly salary despite the fact that I produce a product that people actually use on a day to day basis. There is no money in production or refinement of existing production processes only in endless, useless development on extravagant moonshot boondoggles.
Part of this is that tech companies, after establishing a steady growth model, are often structured around fishing for moonshots. Google is one that does this. They throw devs at various ideas and kill the work if they don't believe the product will be a billion dollar idea, but that decision can take years. This is part of why Google has such a large graveyard of useful projects. And we don't even see the ones they killed before they became external.