Poor developers keeping society afloat with no help whatsoever.

Let’s give the food producers your benefits. They’re probably far more valuable to me than you will ever be. Why empower you with such economic agency then?

If you want the actual answer society pays people commensurate to their individual value. NBA stars make millions because of the level of entertainment they provide, and the value they bring to sponsors. I make a lot of money because not everyone can do my job and I provide an outsized value to tech companies. Despite many attempts to drive developer wages into the ground with code camps and other non-sense apparently it's a difficult enough job not everyone can do it. For comparison, garbage men make a LOT of money (at least where I am) because their job isn't easy and no one wants to do it.

No one wants to hear they're worth less than someone they perceive to be doing an "easier" job. Truth is, that's how society values people.

imho these comments demonstrate an insane level of hubris that is difficult to find in any truly talented engineer

Nothing I said was hubris. I literally work a 12x5 on call, sometimes 24xN when things get bad. I don't ever really get the chance to "clock out". I've spent a long time developing a very special set of skills not everyone has. I am paid well for it. I am not going to waste my time doing CSR work. I won't be good at it, it makes my schedule even more complicated, it provides no value to me nor what I am paid to do, etc. The hubris is that PHBs and spreadsheet jockeys think they understand my job better than I do. It's a tale as old as time: clearly the guy who sits in front of a computer all day drinking coffee must have an easy job and can take on more unrelated work.

Maybe I'm not truly talented and you're right (nice no true scotsman though). My paycheck and the fact I can leave a job tomorrow and get a new one for even more money says someone thinks I'm extremely valuable.

"The hubris is that PHBs and spreadsheet jockeys think they understand my job better than I do": where are you imagining these things from? Who ever said they understand YOUR job better than you? I think it's safe to say, the article was probably not written with you personally in mind. And I think it's also safe to say, you personally are not the same as every engineer out there.

Someone simply suggested that VC-backed companies (presumably, often of the startup kind), the company can achieve more economic success when engineers spend some time with customers (and let's not forget that the customer need is the SOLE reason that the engineer's job exists at all).

The hubris is in the failure to acknowledge that you do not represent the entire world of engineers, and the unwillingness to contemplate a scenario where just maybe, an engineer could be better at their job, if they took more time to understand that which created its reason to exist.