[menaerus]

Exactly but they are not orthogonal as you try to make them to be. That's just trivializing things too much, ignoring all the nuance. You sound like my uncle who has spent a career in the IT but never really touched the programming but he nevertheless has a strong opinion how easy and trivial the programming really is, and how this was not super interesting to him because this is work done by some other unimportant folks. In reality you know, he just cannot admit that he was not committed enough, or shall I say likely not capable enough, to end up in that domain, and instead he ended up writing test specifications or whatnot. A classic example of Dunning-Kruger effect.

There is a nuance in what you say. You say it is "still easy" but it is not. It is not enough to take a course on operating systems and learn C to start contributing to the operating system kernel in impactful way. Apart from other software "courses" that you need to take such as algorithms, advanced data structures, concurrency, lock-free algorithms, probably compilers etc. the one which is really significant and is not purely software domain is the understanding of the hardware. And this is a big one.

You cannot write efficient algorithms if you don't know the intricacies of the hardware, and if you don't know how to make the best out of your compiler. This cannot be taught out of the context as you suggest so in reality all of these skills are actually interwhined and not quite orthogonal to each other.

[skydhash]

I do agree with you that there's a skill tree for any practical work to be done. And nodes can be simple or hard. But even if there are dependencies between them, the nodes are clearly separated from each other and some are shared between some skill sets.

If you take the skill tree you need to be a kernel contributor, it does not take much to jump over to database systems development, or writing GUI. You may argue that the barrier entry for web dev is lower, but that's because of all the foundational work that has been done to add guardrails. In kernel work, they are too expensive so there's no hand holding there. But in webdev, often enough, you'll have to go past the secure boundary of those guardrails and the same skill node like advanced data structures and concurrency will be helpful there.

Kernel dev is not some mythical land full of dragons. A lot of the required knowledge can be learned while working in another domain (or if you're curious enough).

[menaerus]

No, it's not mythical but it is vastly more difficult and more complex than the majority of other software engineering roles. Entry barrier being lower elsewhere is not something I would argue at all. It's a common sense. Unless you're completely delusional. While there's a lot of skills you can translate from system programming domain elsewhere there are not a lot of skills you can translate vice-versa.