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A comment on Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems. Parent comment

Re:Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten ... by api on Monday July 18, 2022 @09:17PM (#32146287)
If there was tremendous demand for ditch diggers in excess of supply, digging ditches would pay very well. How hard something is has nothing to do with it.

If the current supply and demand stays the way it is eventually things will even out. Programmer salaries will stagnate as more people enter the field and other fields may have salaries go up if there are not enough candidates.

This process is very slow though. It’s not a very efficient market due to opaqueness and the fact that people don’t like to change jobs too much. A huge reallocation can take a generation or more.

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Re:Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten ... by robocat on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @05:25PM (#32158191)
> ditch diggers in excess of supply, digging ditches would pay very well

Only if ditches are valuable enough.

Otherwise everyone does without ditches (long drop, sump hole), or find solutions that don’t need ditches (eg wireless or overground cables), or invent new ways of making ditches that are not digging (ditch witch, suction vacs), or other smart workarounds (trenchless water pipe, fibre optic horizontal drilling).

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