Where Does Software Engineering Fit?

It's interesting to think about whether software engineering is a "winner takes all" market or an "auction" market. At first glance, many (especially outside the field) would immediately say that your value as a developer is almost entirely based around the quality of the code that you write.

After all, isn't it a trade like carpentry, or writing? Carpenters produce woodwork, writers produce literature, and software engineers produce... code?

This might be true for the first few years in your career as an engineer, but as soon as you get over the hump of figuring out how to express your thoughts in sequences logical symbols, the game changes in a few ways.