This argument rings hollow when you look a level down.

You couldn't do your work without your keyboard. Why doesn't your keyboard's designer deserve a share, too? What about the EE who designed the CPU in your machine? The physicist who came up with the process to manufacture the CPU? The mechanical engineer who built the machine that implements that process? The chemist who invented the solder that connects it all together?

Every single one of those people gets paid less than the programmer, their work affects millions, and without them, the programmer could not affect the same number of people or indeed could not work at all. So why should the programmer get all the cash?

(This is kind of a strawman argument, and is meant to be a little provocative. There are some pretty obvious holes in it. But I do think it is a real argument and you cannot dismiss it entirely. There is something here.)

A 16 year old child can work in a factory putting a keyboard together. Face it, there is a pyramid , and some jobs require the smartest people humanity has and that job is programming. Computer science is becoming established and is the most important area in the progress of civilization now. All other human work exists only to support us programmers at a species level of thinking and we make the real contributions that matter , that live on for centuries. The doctors exist to keep programmers healthy and all the people below us we depend on. The farmers exist to keep programmers fed. But have you wondered why do we programmers exist? We exist to automate and manage all these people below us and direct humanities endeavors through the systems we imagine and bring into reality.

Lmaooooooooo

This is a bad troll post.

Excuse me, what? This is extreme even for sarcasm

Although a lot of people have made fun of your post, and it sounds a bit funny in a macabre way, I actually think it has more than a ring of truth to it. Programmers are essentially doing this, except that I would say that the people on top are the CEOs that know how to put a team of programmers together. But regardless, I think your description is actually eerily accurate because people are so dependent on technology, that they basically work like crazy to afford it and be immersed in it.

Software developers don't need expensive hardware most of the time. They don't have to pay the cost of borrowed capital unlike a factory that costs millions and takes years to pay off the business loans.

The companies producing chips do make a lot of money but nothing compared to e.g. a $5000 lathe that only does one job.

> Programmers are incredibly productive.

Some developers are. Most aren't. If you work in a startup, or on some new project within some big company, you are very likely to be producing vaporware that will impact zero users, either because the software is bad or because of some issues in marketing or management beyond your control. In either case, your real economic productivity is negative.