Please stop treating them as some enlightened class. They're not.
Software engineers face the same idiocy as everyone else. Every other industry has smart, creative, individuals willing to buck the system and try new things for an edge.
If you truly believe people can't express a simple argument for trialing this sort of thing without losing their jobs maybe they should be looking for a new job because their current one sounds like a train wreck waiting to happen.
Software engineers are special in the sense that they’re expensive to replace. It costs time and effort, both of which are much more scarce than money. Businesses are also usually expanding, so there’s no shortage of openings. This gives us more freedom by definition.
However, some sectors of software engineering are much more strict. You wouldn’t take a “Just do it” attitude in aviation, for example. It’s easy to say “move to some other sector,” but eventually most devs try to build a career in one area.
All qualified and experienced people are expensive to replace.
That's not unique to software.
It is a privilege not shared by the large majority of jobs.
This is absolutely not the case.
Software Engineering has a massive IQ-based barrier to entry. Not only that, your advantages are in large part, from a purely technical perspective, are reflected in your ability to consume algorithms, techniques, and hold more variables in your head at a faster rate than others.
It's an incredibly unique union of art and engineering, we are in demand as every industry needs it, and there is a genetic bottleneck.
We suffer from massive privilege because even semi-technical people have no idea what the fuck we are doing, so oversight is limited at best.
As someone who came from being a huge overachiever in a different industry, we are insanely privileged.
Certain people do tend to have an easier time with skills that make it easier to be a developer, but there is a VAST untapped potential of people that think of our work as "coding" and assume they're unable to learn. We really need an influx of people with systems thinking and other "high-level" abilities—development skills are required, but not the deep technical abilities our field has traditionally prized.
I've worked with plenty of "genius" types who can write advanced algorithms with lightning speed, but aren't able to see their work in a larger context—nor able to explain to others what they're doing. And I've worked with "normal" people (usually with an oversized dose of Imposter Syndrome) who are so much more effective because they understand the why as well as the how, while also being better communicators.
And let's cut out the IQ bullshit until there's a proven link between IQ and ability to deliver business value.
>A growing body of research suggests general cognitive ability may be the best predictor of job performance.
I don't think there's any doubt between IQ and delivering business value. Some argue EQ is more valuable, but that doesn't mean IQ isn't important.
Even given studies that show a link, there's a big difference between requiring a minimum IQ of 85 to join the US Armed Forces (as mentioned in the Wikipedia article on Intelligence Quotient) compared to asserting a minimum IQ of 120 (or whatever) to be a software developer, as amosquito seems to be doing in their comment ("...massive IQ-based barrier to entry..."). Of course there has to be some floor of intelligence to perform the job—but I'd argue it's a lot lower than many in our field believe.
Second, a "genetic bottleneck"? That absolutely reeks of genetic elitism. It implies, rather heavily, that they are genetically superior to those who cannot (or just don't) do this work.
The idea that we are special because no one understands us - finance, biotech, pharmaceuticals... No one really gets those, either.
If you sprint continuously you will collapse from exhaustion. The clues in the name! But I doubt the Agile crowd thought it through when choosing the name.