Were Software Engineers blue-collar workers all along?

Software engineers are typically labeled white-collar, but the core claim is that they function as skilled tradespeople: they make and fix things, just in bits rather than atoms, and attain expertise through years of hands-on practice rather than solely through formal education. Treating software development as a trade reframes the work as craftsmanship comparable to electricians, carpenters, plumbers and maintenance engineers, and credits the technical skill and apprenticeship-like development that the role requires.

That reclassification helps explain the current AI-driven identity crisis in the field. Historically, blue-collar tradespeople adapted to mechanization by learning to operate new tools; white-collar roles have been more exposed to economic disruption. Software engineers are now experiencing similar displacement pressures as automation and AI outpace routine tasks and erode the special status and protected time they once had. The pragmatic resolution proposed is to adopt the same approach tradespeople used: learn to wield the new tools, integrate automation into practice, and accept that hand-crafted work may persist only as a chosen craft rather than a default source of pay.