Programmers weren't overpaid: they were scarce

Here’s a puzzle from my own résumé. I studied international business. A business graduate (almost any graduate) leaves university and earns roughly minimum wage. A programmer starts at minimum and is earning double or triple within months ▸ 27:33. Why?

The honest answer was never “because programming is that much harder.” It was scarcity: the market demanded far more programmers than existed, so the price went up ▸ 28:38.

Expensive inputs invite their own automation

And that’s exactly why what’s happening was predictable in hindsight: when an input gets expensive enough, the market funds whatever makes it cheaper. The thing everyone assumed would be automated last (the people building the automation) became the highest-value target precisely because they cost the most.

lo caro se automatiza primero →

The proof is walking around in my own hands: no computer science degree, school-level basics and self-teaching, and I can now ship apps, games, landing pages, whatever the project needs ▸ 29:27. The scarcity premium I’d have paid a specialist two years ago is gone from my cost structure entirely.

Who keeps the premium

This isn’t “programmers are obsolete.” The ones who stay expensive are the deep experts: the people who build the new frameworks and document them well enough for AI to use them, and the humans-in-the-loop who catch what the models still get wrong ▸ 29:01. What evaporates is the middle: the premium for knowing the syntax when the syntax became free.

Scarcity was the salary. When scarcity ends, only depth still gets paid.

The same wave that broke the “safe career” plan in entry 1-2 is what repriced this market: one story seen from a kitchen table, the other from the labor market. Where the premium migrates next, we’ll be logging as it happens…