> Long story short: other professions clearly delineate between jobs that are (creative) problem solving and jobs that are more "grunt work" like Ikea-assembling CRUD apps. Why don't we?
Is that even possible? It's difficult to separate grunt work and problem solving, because you often need similar levels of context to solve both. They also tend to intertwine a lot.
Of course it is possible. There's just currently more reasons for companies not to care and not to do it than to do it: Capital P Professions have education requirements and licensing/certification commitments. Capital P Professions have ethics bodies and mandate professional standards. Capital P Professions have professional societies that sometimes can organize industry wide negotiations (not quite to the same extent as Unions, but kin to it).
I don't think it is a technical problem keeping software from better sorting its various types of jobs by difficulty and types of problem solving. I think it's far more corporate politics and sociopolitics and a general lazy preference for the current status quo (because it works to company's favors in terms of job description opacity and keeping pay scales confused and under-valued and, uh, not having to worry about "quaint" "old timey" things like professional ethics investigations).
Software Engineering is also a capital P profession on the countries where it is a professional title, and not something that one is allowed to call themselves after a six weeks bootcamp.
Is that even possible? It's difficult to separate grunt work and problem solving, because you often need similar levels of context to solve both. They also tend to intertwine a lot.