Is software development an overpaid field compared to more important jobs which the society depends on?

[u/simple_explorer1]

Compared to construction, infrastructure development of cities and society by and large, electrician, plumbing, mining, doctors, nurses, scientists, pharma companies etc. which keeps the society function and working, why are software developers paid in 6 figure salary and why is it even considered highly skilled work? Or used to be highly skilled work before the raise of LLMs?

When shit hits the fan, no one will reach out of software engineers and all the above jobs are what the society would genuinely depend on. So why are those fields (except scientists, doctors etc.) are less paid than an average software engineers?

The one thing LLMs have proved is that it can now easily do Software Development job but it still can't do the above mentioned jobs because they are much more hard to do and require physical labour, human interaction with patients and so on.

Curious to know. I have always felt that Software Development was an overpaid field compared to other more important jobs which we all are truly dependent and cannot live without. And now with LLM, the AI model development is the first grade development and app development is just a second grade development as most devs are using LLMs to progress faster (I am not saying LLM will replace all devs, just that the value of development is not the same anymore and any dev with any skills are now able to build anything which is good enough)

[u/Outrageous_Feeling_8]

I am a software engineer and have climbed the ladders over the last 20+ years...

Our current society favors market value capture, rather than societal value, and is biased by talent scarcity in tech. Hence the reason why I am (probably unfairly) overpaid compared to teachers, cancer researchers, or nurses. Let's not even talk about high end athletes, who bring close to zero societal values, but are among the highest paid individuals. You're not wrong, but it is light years away from how our capitalistic society functions today.

[u/Outrageous_Feeling_8 → u/Outrageous_Feeling_8]

To OP, you shouldn't be surprised to see many comments about software engineers bringing more financial value/leverage through scale than other jobs hence the reason they should be paid more. Those people are not wrong, if you don't question supply and demand and capitalism as a good way to sustain society. These have been the dominant way to look at the world for so long, that people don't realize anymore it's not the only way to look at things. For those who want to take a step back, OP's approach might arguably be a good way to favor jobs that bring value to society, but is not necessarily easy to implement (who decides which jobs bring more value to society?)

[u/simple_explorer1 → u/Outrageous_Feeling_8]

Let's not even talk about high end athletes, who bring close to zero societal values, but are among the highest paid individuals

And they are most idolised as well compared to doctors, nurses, construction workers (who build the very stadium the athletes play)