Were software engineers blue-collar workers all along?

bananaflag

> But if we learn how to use the looms, the spreadsheets, and the chainsaws, we might just be okay. Er, no. That's the thing about general intelligence, it's general.

kvgr

Workers of the internet.

gizajob

No. > We are the seamstresses lamenting the introduction of the loom. We are the lumberjacks worrying about chainsaws. We’re the accountants panicking about being replaced by Excel Accountants absolutely loved Excel. They couldn’t hand over the money fast enough. Bad take.

rwmj

Is white vs blue collar ever a useful distinction? I think worker versus capital owner is a more important one.

ktallett

It depends on what level of control you have. I don't count blue and white collar as dirty or clean hands, but more task doer or task master.

petesergeant

The article makes no real attempt to explain how software developers are different from sales people or paralegals or graphic designers or journalists.

darkwi11ow

It depends on the type of work you do. Majority of SWE just recently needed to write 100 lines of code per day and they'll do fine in their jobs. Then there are people designing new systems, new methodologies, discovering bleeding edge tech. This is completely different type of job. If speaking in car analogy, there are people doing repairs or assembling ready made parts and then there are people inventing new cars.

noduerme

Yeah, dude. In the 30 years I've spent writing code and building shit from scratch, I've always described myself as a mechanic or a plumber. Not a "founder" or a "SWE" like most of the dumbfucks around here. (Last I checked, engineering was a white collar job requiring a degree, while writing React was closer to using your hand to unclog a toilet -- so don't fucking call yourself an engineer). Knowing how to make shit and fix it is a blue collar job, whether that's rebuilding a motor or writing a SQL query, and if there's a bit of creative artisanship in what you're tasked with, then you're lucky. Even if part of my job was to create actual art or UX to go along with the code I was writing, I'm, at best, the kind of mechanic who takes the wheels off, takes the dash off, strips the paint off, takes your car down to bare metal, and puts it back together with a new motor looking brand new. With a good bit of pride. Nothing about code is not blue collar if you actually code for a living. Unless you have visions of grandeur. And the truth is, no founder actually codes for very long. They never did. The managers and the business school graduates don't, either. Their job is to fool people into giving them money, and tell other people what to do; not to know how to make anything. They're white collar; they're parasites. Three decades of those dumb fucks have gone by, plus the wave of idiots trading NFTs, plus the wave of idiots using AI. Craft code, use your brain, make it right, and it will be a representation of your thought process. In the service of a business. And it is a good job, and it is a blue collar job. Because to the business you're working for? If you're doing your job right, you're a plumber, or a general contractor. TL;DR, coding has always been a blue collar job, to those who code as mechanics to make and fix things. But long live us: We make things, and the business class is basically helpless without us. LLMs or not; they're pathetically incapable of doing anything technical for themselves.

rob74

Since wearing white shirts vs blue overalls is somewhat outdated, let me phrase it another way: do you sit at a desk or at a workbench? If it's the former, you're a white-collar worker, and AI ain't gonna change that. Actually, the fact that AI is (allegedly) replacing your job confirms that: it's better at white-collar jobs. I don't see AI fixing my car or my washing machine anytime soon...

wolfi1

I never see myself as a white collar worker, rather a galley slave

HolyLampshade

I think it is more likely SWE thought they were not replaceable where any function in a company is replaceable with enough motivation (whether wise or not). The other issue I’ve been mulling over is two part. What in the hell have all these SWEs been actually doing? (As in, what software were the vast majority contributing to?) By extension, were many of these projects critical to the bottom line? I guess what I’m getting at is if you can have a robot do a sloppy job of what you were doing before, and have that still be ok for the organization, maybe what you were doing in the first place wasn’t critical. I’m not saying it’s not short sighted (I think many orgs are subjugating themselves to external entities, and are going to be violently bit in the ass when suddenly no one left in the firm has any comprehension of how all of their systems work), but, and I don’t say this lightly, maybe the SWE “profession” has a bit of bloat it can afford to shed?

caaqil

> Software engineers are discovering that, just like anyone else in a skilled trade, they actually can be outpaced by technology. So we do what other skilled traders have done: figure out how to use the new technology to do the jobs we used to do by hand. The current evidence of spiralling by the community indicates they are not as graceful as this article implies.

jdw64

Nice to meet you, fellow workers!

postsantum

You have been promoted to proletariat

tinthedev

Yes and no (but mainly no). Software Engineering is in this weird limbo where a whole subsection of the industry thinks it can be a blue-collar "I just code" type of contributor... those types are going to slowly be eliminated. But for the majority of us, the job always was more involved than just code. And that's white-collar work, through and through. Civil engineers never could scale to pouring concrete themselves, thus the blue/white collar split. Software doesn't have that problem.

HPsquared

I always remember that site "Software Carpentry". It's definitely artisanal. Not that there can't be high-level practitioners. Are professional athletes blue-collar?

ionetan

Yes. Started off cleaning school toilets. Went to a bootcamp 10 years ago, taught myself the rest, got to sit in fancy offices and drink coffee, but always felt outta place. "You can take the kid out of the ..." and so on. Guess I gotta pick up the broom again.

Ekaros

Lot of it has been and will be skilled but not that special work. Say something like electrical design work. Follow certain sets of thumb rules and you are fine. There have really been no regulation either. Basically people who decide where does your power and whatever cables go in building. Or plumbing or ventilation... Skilled work, but not actually anything special. Just comparatively productive as product is cheap to reproduce. This type of work has long been the white collar work.

drsalt

no the uniform is hoodies

Havoc

It seems like a pretty arbitrary distinction these days, much like being a "professional". Ultimately all jobs are subject to supply and demand driven and SWE's world is getting rocked by 3 sharp turning points at once - a trillion bootcamp "just learn to code" people entered the market leading to oversupply, ZIRP ended cutting demand and AI turns out to be good at code creating a substitution effect. That's one hell of a storm that inevitably is going to lead to some shipwrecks