clipped from www.halfsigma.com

In general, I think you are confusing 'coders' with 'engineers'. In my personal terminology, there's a gaping void that separates the two. 'Coders' are exactly what you describe - nothing more than a commodity. I can hire temporary coders from anywhere in the world to churn out mindless classes and programs. 'Engineering' is a completely different thing to me. Being able to do a little problem analysis, business-case analysis, a little design and architecture and then applying that to a domain-specific solution in the form of software is an art and should never be viewed as anything other than prestigious. Remember that the root of the engineer is 'genius'.