What do Software Engineers think of Capitalism ? Do you see yourselves just as “white collar” workers and code monkeys to be exploited ? Or do you see yourselves as harbingers of change towards a more knowledge based economy ?

I see devs simultaneously as creators of chaos and as tamers of chaos. But mostly as creators

I see devs as a bunch of whiny, pretentious and oponionated assholes. But to answer in terms of your post I would normally say white collar workers.

Sure, they might br working on life changing technology, but unless it was their original idea or devised a major component of whatever application, then I would normally point to the top dude/dudette in a particular organization.

Harbingers of change lol. Bro we’re just devs here.

Officially we are Golden Colars.

But yes, we are the lowest chain in the product manufacturing hierarchy, so we are nothing but intelligent blue colars, i.E. Code monkeys.

White collar with society impact.

I for once am an economists, freeing mainly blue and white collars of hideous repetitive tasks. So they can focus on the core questions and competences.

Devs are not a uniform, homogenized group. As in every group, there are multiple levels.

- The code monkeys: those with bare knowledge of the code & project, coding exactly as they are told

- The coders, that implement small-scale innovations that optimize the task at hand

- The programmers, those that can alter the procedure/logic to better solve the problems.

- The gods (or programmers++) that can alter both procedure and nature of approach to the problem.

The list is not complete, but it begins from blue and goes to white. The nice about that, is that you can move up (and down) the intellectual ladder. More or less, everyone is needed to develop a solution. For example, Linus Tovalds said in an interview, that he can't program a UI to save his life... even if he is (by my estimate) god-tier.

Im dat nigga 😎

Ha. How about just a person performing a task that will provide for me and my family at reasonable market based wages. Do the societal good crap on your own time.

@monkeyboy Assuming you refer to my post:

"a person performing a task that will provide for me and my family at reasonable market based wages"

That is you, for your own family. Unless you expect another to solve that for you - please clarify.

"Do the societal good crap on your own time"

I am. I am answering a question at devrant, for free, in my own free time.