>Then there are engineers (and people in every profession) who never try for the entirety of their careers, and this is the majority of every profession.
I find this pretty ridiculous. It's just that the standards are pretty low in IT. And being a good programmer just isn't a job requirement in the industry. I don't know a single case where a someone got fired for writing bad code.
Through the blog I get to meet a lot of people from all walks of life, and this has broadly been the consensus, with some exceptions. "Never try" is maybe unique to I.T, "remain fundamentally incompetent or try incorrectly" is very common.
I was horrified to hear surgeons say that they view their field this way. Lawyers seem to be a bit more optimistic on average, but I still hear horror stories now and then. But yes, the floor varies field-by-field, though the broad point I want to make is that I.T is not uniquely bad.
See: HR, recruiters, real estate agents, etc. I had a friend's birthday party where he and all his guests worked in hospitality, and the stories I heard did not at all indicate that the industry is run sensibly.
EDIT: Oh, and of course, I talk to journalists now and they say the exact same thing once the microphone is off.
One of the most important changes in the recent decades is that the bar to become a journalist (as in, someone that wields the 4th power of broadcasting) has been lowered tremendously (from print / radio / tv to bloggers / wiki editors / podcasts / home video makers / streamers...).
P.S.: Congrats, you are a decently powerful journalist too now.
I find this pretty ridiculous. It's just that the standards are pretty low in IT. And being a good programmer just isn't a job requirement in the industry. I don't know a single case where a someone got fired for writing bad code.