How the software industry changed

My old friend Gonzo (a.k.a. John) wrote a very good post ("Welcome to Jiffy Tech") on how the computer and software industry changed since we started in this business 25 or so years ago.

He talks about how as the industry has progressed and became more complicated, salaries got lower and lower.

I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine over beers back in the mid-80's. He was trying to understand exactly what it was I did and why it paid so well. I thought for a moment and replied that we were the "priests in the temples in the Dark Ages". We were elite because we knew how to read in an illiterate world. But one day, as technology spread, we'd be the new auto mechanics.

He was right then, and now. Even though the complexity of systems has increased many times, and the debugging and fixing problems has become more and more complicated, the salaries for a good coder and a good troubleshooter have gone down to maybe a fifth of what they were 15 years ago (in real terms). Oh, longing for the old days.