Comment by ahzhou

Re: salaries of non-software engineers.

The thing that’s hard to intuit is that salary isn’t a reflection of the difficulty or importance of your job. It’s a reflection of economics. The skill set of a software engineer enables a better business model than that of a civil engineer. These superior economics get reflected in better salaries, even if the two people are equally skilled in their respective fields.

A construction company will need to spend cash on machines, permitting, raw materials, labor, and more to earn money. A software business needs to pay for compute and labor.