The gap between CS majors and software jobs is misleading. You don't need a CS degree to become a decent programmer.
Still, if there's such a shortage of good programmers (and I agree that there probably is) then why aren't we playing this to our advantage? A senior engineer can't afford a house in the Bay Area or New York, and our status is low-- we still work for managers; we're a defeated tribe in this way. Most of us don't have the autonomy to choose our tools or decide whether to use or replace old legacy code. Shouldn't our top priority, as a tribe, be to change this?
Still, if there's such a shortage of good programmers (and I agree that there probably is) then why aren't we playing this to our advantage? A senior engineer can't afford a house in the Bay Area or New York, and our status is low-- we still work for managers; we're a defeated tribe in this way. Most of us don't have the autonomy to choose our tools or decide whether to use or replace old legacy code. Shouldn't our top priority, as a tribe, be to change this?
We should make programmer autonomy our major issue. http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/25/programmer-au... This will benefit us and the economy as a whole.
Then, after we've had this victory, we can work on increasing the total number of programmers.