WARNING this one's going to be contentious, but it's not anti-establishment or anti rules or anti behaving. It's a vote for fairness.
This one talks about classes. This is not the kind of class we find in software, but the kind we find in society that sorts people into tiers and then uses those tiers to decide what a person is worth. The "that person is from the wrong side of the tracks, they'll never amount to anything" thing.
I try not to say "I hate this or that" often... but this is one of the few instances I say it.
I hate the idea that the paper someone holds, whether that's a degree or a fat stack of dolla dolla bills y'all, decides their value to society.
The paper problem
Straight up, and this might seem like a virtue signal of sorts (and I hope it isn't seen this way), I'm putting my cards on the table. I have a BSc in Information Technology, I've got that paper. But I didn't start with it. I taught myself to code in high school, years before a university got involved. So I've stood on both sides of this fence: self-taught kid first, graduate second. A degree teaches you basics, but it's "almost" out of date before the ink dries on the books. It didn't make me better at the job, it made me easier to hire. Those are not the same thing. I'm on the "right" side of the rules I'm complaining about. I could "pull the ladder up" and lord my degree over the diploma and self-taught people. But that's not me, I'm not a flexer or a "I'm better than you"-er.
I just think the rules are nonsense.
Please don't hear what I'm NOT saying. I'm not saying that degrees don't take hard work or that a PhD doesn't take a lot of hard work. Those things are hard work, effort and they deserve respect.
But does the piece of paper make that person more valuable than someone without it? In my eyes, no. In a lot of other people's eyes, very much yes.
I've watched it play out in my own field. I've seen fellow software developers earn less than their peers while shipping the same quality of work, sometimes better work, purely because they were self-taught, or had a diploma instead of a degree. Same output. Sometimes a better output. Smaller number on the payslip, just because of the paper they didn't have.
To me that's a flat-out injustice. Sure, from the business's side it reads as great "value for money." But life isn't about that. Not for me anyway.
Where credentials do definitely help is with the hiring process (and no this isn't the ONLY place they help) because it SHOULD mean they know the "basics" and the core principles. But if you take a swing on a self-taught or diploma holding dev you should bring them up to par on the payment scale if they prove themselves.
It goes way past degrees
For me, this isn't only a credentials thing, it spans across multiple areas of life.
Look at etiquette for example, the whole world of airs and graces. Now again, don't hear what I'm not saying. I'm not advocating for showing up late, disrespecting people and swearing at people in mails. I'm talking about societal hierarchies. This is going to sound tinfoil-hatty, but just humour me for a moment please: a large chunk of that stuff started life as a class and hierarchy control mechanism... how to bow, how to stand, which fork to use... how to act. A system for keeping the "right" people comfortably above the "wrong" people.
Now I'm not saying chuck all manners and decorum in the bin, we aren't savages. Plenty of it is just being decent to each other, and I'm all for that. I'm talking specifically about the bits that exist only to elevate some people over others. The keeping-the-royalty-away-from-the-unwashed-masses bits. Those ones can go.
"I say, old boy, how DARE you even think of wearing THOSE trousers with that cardigan." (pompous gaffawing ensues, elbow nudged into the noble beside him)
And the same idea gets dragged straight into the present day. People get looked down on for starting life on the back foot. For where they grew up. For picking an "ordinary" profession instead of something suitably prestigious.
I don't even need to list ordinary or respectable professions, if you have an ongoing internal monologue like me, it probably already spat out a few names. And that's what I'm talking about, that little ranking that happens.
Who you are is the value
This is my idealistic wishful thinking perspective (and I state it this way because it stands in opposition to the world at large).
I'm proudly part of the unwashed masses. I genuinely do not care if you're a doctor, a lawyer, a street sweeper, or living in your mom's basement chasing your dream of becoming a Gospel Dubstep Interpretive Dance Performer.
Who you are is your value. Not the net worth you bring to the table, not the letters after your name, not the postcode you were born into.
And this is where the "tekkie traps the tar" (or the rubber hits the road) for me personally. I've hired people, worked alongside people, and the degree has almost never been the thing that told me what someone was actually made of. The work they did and how they treated people showed me their substance. The paperwork basically just told me they could survive a few years of exams... which IS hard work... but it's not the same as worth.
Am I saying we should let people practice medicine without the credentials and the training? NO. I absolutely do not want someone doctoring me who hasn't put in the years and earned the qualification. Credentials matter when they're proof you can actually do the thing safely. What I'm pushing back on is something different: deciding whether a person is valuable based on their "standing." That's the bit I want us to move away from. I don't want someone running the till at SPAR or Checkers to be treated differently than the lawyer next door. Everyone deserves respect, from the person at the door saying "hello" to the CEO.
Judge people on what they do and how they treat others. That's it. That's the whole measure.
The rest is just airs and graces.
I know we all have different experiences and perceptions. I believe we are the sum total of our experiences, how we dealt with them and the decisions we made from that point on. I really want to hear other people's perspectives on these kinds of things. Am I hoping for a world where a person is valued the same in an oily overall as in a shiny white coat? Yes, I am. We can absolutely argue about impact, a dead car and a death on an operating table are not the same weight. But impact is a measure of the work. It was never a measure of the person doing it. Tell me where I've got this wrong, I'd genuinely rather hear an honest disagreement than a polite nod.