Why do software engineers get paid so much?

software engineers are pretty rich. Let's investigate why they actually get paid so much. This is episode 4 of Demystifying Software Engineering. You probably heard your SWE friend say they make 300k, 400k or even 500k a year. But how is that possible? There are really three main reasons for this. One engineer at Google can build something that's used by hundreds of millions of people. Compare that to a dentist for example, they can only see so many patients a day. The next and probably the biggest reason is the profit margins. A SaaS company could easily run on 80% gross margins while a typical grocery store or restaurant is barely squeezing by with 2 to 5% margins. Third reason is supply. Despite people thinking that software engineering is super saturated, which I agree to some extent, the number of engineers who can actually ship real production systems at scale is relatively small. A lot of people have CS degrees but only a fraction of them are skilled and competent enough to provide company value. So these companies are essentially fighting over a small pool of skilled software engineers. When you combine all of these reasons, it starts to make a little bit more sense. But one thing I'm actually curious about is if AI makes one engineer three times more productive, should the software engineer get paid more or less? I actually have no idea, can someone help me out here? Oh and follow along for episode five.