The reality of working in tech: We're not hired to write code (2023)

I wonder if the fact that we're not hired to write code, is also the reason we're not paid as much as some other roles. This is my big frustration: that senior programmers (in NL at least) are not paid as much as managers, POs, various kinds of architects, and even scrum masters.

A couple of years ago, I was freelancing for a company where I wrote a lot of excellent code. They had a bunch of data they wanted to do something with, but weren't entirely sure what or how, so I did that for them. Connected, visualized it, made it fast, and they loved it. And so did I. It was fun work, I talked to a lot of people about what they wanted and needed, and delivered that.

My freelance period ended, but I wasn't ready to leave this project yet, so I became an employee, but that turned out to be a massive step back in terms of income. Despite the fact that I worked closely with lots of stakeholders and solved complex problems for them, their internal rules didn't allow them to pay me as more than a code monkey. I felt all the non-code work I did wasn't being appreciated. Nor the code work.

I left, they ruined the application (it's apparently slow as molasses now), and now I'm about to go back. I guess I've made peace with the fact that they don't pay programmers as much as I think they should. (It's not actually bad pay, just not as much as non-programmers get.) But mostly, it was a fun project that taught me a lot, and I want more of that.

This is the general culture in Europe. Techies do not get promoted and do not even have a possibility to grow to management. Everything is run by humanities people and we do not even have the right words to describe this situation, although some voiced their concerns for many years, see e.g. The Two Cultures [1] from 1959.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

  > and do not even have a possibility to grow to management.

Hang on, why should this even be the goal? I really do want to question the premise of this kind of ladder in the first place. You got someone with a really good skill, one that is critical to your operations and you... want to put them in charge of people rather than keep doing what they're doing? You can just keep promoting people with whatever direction you want them to go in. It is all arbitrary and made up anyways. So why not keep promoting them in a direction where you still benefit from those technical skills?

Nope.

I do not say that experts have to be put in charge of people instead of doing what they're doing.

I rather say that experts should be in charge of what they are doing.

I think this is the case with real engineering companies. My wife works at Rijkswaterstaat, and there engineers bear direct responsibility for projects that are worth lives, and they can make important decisions about those projects for that reason. For example, a couple of years ago an engineer closed a bridge because of a lack of maintenance. Big scandal about the bridge getting closed, but the real scandal was that maintenance was so far behind. Turned out the engineer had warned about this several times before, but somehow those messages didn't arrive at the people in charge of planning and funding maintenance. So that was the process that really needed fixing (and the bridge, of course).