Thread by @patio11

Inbox (paraphrased): Why do you keep trying to get more people into engineering? This will depress wages for engineers.

This is not an unreasonable question, but it is probably indicative of a failure to accurately predict a values system. The brief version of this:

At the object level, I don't agree that increasing the number of engineers results in reduced compensation for engineers, because the amount of value created by software is materially non-static. I think it will plausibly be tens of percent of the broader economy.

This implies an orientation of a variety of people from their current positions or, in the case of folks not in careers yet, their hypothetical positions in a non-software world, towards careers in software. This feels both useful and just; software is a great place to be.

At the moral level:

A guild or union represents the interests of current (and maybe past) members. I am not a member of a guild or union of engineers. I am a happy member of the clade/tribe/community/etc of software people. Aspirants *are my people*; I care about their outcomes.

Also, if you want to model me as a profit-maximizing capitalist you're going to make a lot of modeling errors, but if you persist in doing that at least model me as a capitalist correctly: I am almost certainly a net buyer rather than seller of engineering labor over my lifetime.