In Germany there are programs, its a 3 year program and one works in a company and attends classes in a school for theory aspects. So for 3 years you are apprentice, after that journeyman. I assume that you cannot become Master (Meister) for that career path, but probably you are then qualified to attend a college to get a Computer Science or a Software engineering degree.
One should not underestimate how the "Journeyman -> Master" step is overall also one of gate-keeping. My cousin did his "Meister" as a car mechanic and it was costly (compared to for example getting a university degree in Germany which basically is for free) and he needed to do it, so that he could own his own repair shop (otherwise he would have had to hire a "Meister"). In his Meister-Training he was also exposed to a lot of legal regulations and some training in book-keeping etc, which of course is valuable to someone to whom math never was intuitive.
> So for 3 years you are apprentice, after that journeyman.
What's nutty is that journeyman usually means "capable of a day's work without supervision" (hence the name: journee-man) and I doubt three years of work is really sufficient for that in complex fields like software development.
Granted, I worked with unusually skilled people for much of my early carreer, but I didn't stop feeling like an apprentice for at least seven years if I include education.
I think it depends heavily on what you are working on. The vast majority of software development is effectively web forms connected to a simple backend/database. The web equivalent of MS-Access or Lotus Notes development.
I mean, you can do a lot more, and many are... It just cannot be underestimated how much low hanging fruit software dev there is in practice.
One should not underestimate how the "Journeyman -> Master" step is overall also one of gate-keeping. My cousin did his "Meister" as a car mechanic and it was costly (compared to for example getting a university degree in Germany which basically is for free) and he needed to do it, so that he could own his own repair shop (otherwise he would have had to hire a "Meister"). In his Meister-Training he was also exposed to a lot of legal regulations and some training in book-keeping etc, which of course is valuable to someone to whom math never was intuitive.