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>> but I'm not sure the "dedicated developer for a small e-commerce site" job exists much anymore. They have been replaced by Shopify, WIX and even Amazon.

Mate I thought this was the case until over the last 2 years I have met a number of mum and dad "coding" companies that literally make their bread and butter from building websites using these platforms and shit like wordpress. I was actually blown away that a few of them had managed to make enough to maintain/pay off houses in Sydney (and in nice parts of the city too) and still have enough to buy a bimmer and a audi to boot. Like considering over the last few years I have been trying to get myself out of the laboring market and into I.T, I had to actually stop my jaw dropping in obvious exclamation when I found out these people support their lavish lifestyles providing products that are literally DRAG AND DROP forms of production and not exclaim "you get paid for doing that shit?!" its been a real eye opener...there are plenty of luddite's out there willing to pay for crap.

Yeah but you need to understand it's not the actual coding they sell, it's the 'online business consulting' which brings in the moolah

Developers need to get out of their bubble and realize that even a basic website is sorcery for 99% of the population. I'm thankful that I started off in online marketing and then learned to code because I remember what it was like to know nothing and can see opportunities that people like yourself overlook.

This post reminds me of the infamous HN dropbox comment in terms of how out of touch it is.

This is it exactly, the blue collar programming jobs are using the tools mentioned by the GP to build sites.

The downside of the 'sorcery' impression is that they actually think it's magic and once you make magic happen, you can do anything. There are no engineering trade offs to make. Your request isn't unreasonable or infeasible. If you don't cast spells for me, I'll look around for someone who will (try). Cheaper.

This just shows that it's not technical ability that translates to money, it's salesmanship. These people aren't gifted programmers, obviously; what they are good at is doing something that's "good enough" (and beyond the abilities of regular people still, mainly because the regular people haven't even bothered trying to DIY), and then selling it to them. There's countless examples of technical salespeople selling utter crap to clients for huge amounts of money; just look at "enterprise software". Much of it is utter junk, yet costs a fortune because some salesperson can convince some corporate exec that it's great.

Mechanical engineering is not being a "mechanic." They rarely build or install anything with their hands. Usually we sit in cubes running software to analyze physical systems (like air flowing over a wing) and write up the results. We use a lot of math. Technicians, who usually don't have 4-year degrees, handle the actual fabrication and maintenance.

(In case you've forgotten, mechanics is a branch of physics dealing with force, acceleration, mass, that sort of thing.)

I understand. I was more getting at the fact that, for example, an HVAC technician would develop an understanding of basic engineering principals by virtue of their job. But nobody would come out and say that they should be retrained to be MEs.

Those same people would learn basically nothing about CS in their job, yet they should be developers.

Except that they often do have to fab up prototypes, at the least, and the better ones have enough familiarity with the realities of the blue-collar Joe or Jane that's going to have to use and maintain the piece of equipment that the engineer designs.

Why coding and not mechanical engineering? MEs often have jobs that could be considered blue collar if not for their degree: designing, installing, & building the same equipment that many blue collar workers use or maintain.

Mechanical engineering has become a form of coding. Creating a structured design in CAD strikes me as being similar to creating a software design in code.

I'm not an ME, but I work at a site that employs a number of engineers: Mechanical, electrical, embedded systems, software, manufacturing, etc. Granted, the kind of work done by engineers varies from one industry to another. At my site, most of the engineers do very little engineering per se. They spend most of their time creating parts and assemblies in CAD, dealing with suppliers, and engineering bureaucracy (sprints, JIRA, document control, etc.), and troubleshooting manufacturing problems. The software engineers are doing pretty much the same thing, with different tools (IDE instead of CAD).

Part of the issue is degree inflation: People who used to attend trade school and became draftsmen or designers, are now getting 4 year engineering degrees, but the work for draftsmen and designers is still the same, albeit with more efficient tools.