The easiest answer is that HN is frequented by many people whose main (and often only) job activity is software development, so they/we think that our plight is special.

I wonder if there is some hidden irony, because it appears to me that we sometimes assume that everyone else has a simple and straightforward job that we could probably automate.

> The easiest answer is that HN is frequented by many people whose main (and often only) job activity is software development, so they/we think that our plight is special.

That's unfair (and untrue generally). The article is about software developers because it is written by someone who knows about software development. Does it also apply to civil engineers? Maybe, but I wouldn't know.

A while back I quizzed a doctor friend about working conditions in a hospital and found the relationship between doctors and hospital managers to be highly analogous to software. Interestingly the most successful hospital managers tended to be ex-doctors but it was hard to convince doctors to move into management.

The heart of the issue is probably something surrounding trying to "manage" things according to some management principles when you don't understand the domain/skills of the people you are trying to manage.

The more different it is to your career experience, the harder it probably is.

You misunderstand: The only hospital managers are former doctors. As in, they pretty prevent any non-doctor from managing them and that's what we need to do, too.

We could use a cartel at this point, the job has gotten pretty lame and demeaning and as the only person who knows how to actually row the damn boat, I'm getting pretty sick and tired of it.

I’d imagine the writer doesn’t have experience working any other white collar job, they are writing from their own experience. Maybe a bunch of my own gripes with the software industry might apply to paralegals or accountants but I’d never know.

Software engineer is the most common job requiring significant amounts of technical creativity. That makes it different from most white collar professions, and means you can't manage them in the same way you manage for example a group of accountants. Note I am not saying that accounting doesn't requires significant skill, just that for example it is a lot easier to get an accountant what he needs to do his job than to get a software engineer what he needs to do his job.