Not knowing too much about sound engineering myself, I tried comparing it to software engineering

The bar will only get lower with ai assists. Gatekeeping is either essential or futile depending on your perspective.

"The author" in this case is Steve Albini[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Albini_discography#As_an...

The date on the article is actually important here. Music recording is MUCH different then it is today, 20 years later. The best you could do for a home recording was a (comparative to today) shitty 4 track cassette recorder. You really needed some training on the equipment to know what you're doing. The resources just wern't there otherwise. The analogy for the worst cases here is more 'I've turned a computer on, so, Mr Torvalds, heres how a kernel is written'. Of course there were a few brilliant producers. There mostly mediocre producers who just got the job done, that you'll never hear about. Only the outliers, the best and worst get remembered.

I do understand sound engineering. I think their gripe is people claiming they understand how to make something sound good with no actual knowledge of how to do it then making up words along the way. Imagine you have a manager tell you to make the site more “zazzy” with a straight face. Imagine all managers start doing this.

Sorry, but creating and engineering are on two different axes IMHO. Engineering is about using math and science to achieve things, kind of "the way". Creating is about "the goal". You can create beautiful things by just trying random stuff... For me, the vast majority of software is not engineering.

The issue is that producers have no bar at all for the role, and the role is not well defined, unlike software engineers that typically have a 4 year degree, 2 year degree, or at the very least a code camp, before being hired. Would you hire someone for software engineering who had no engineering training or experience just because they can talk lucidly and in detail about what software they like? Maybe a better software analogy here would be to compare producers to product managers. Great PMs are truly gold, but the PM role’s technical requirements are nebulous, and there are plenty of PMs who don’t know how to write code, and don’t know how to craft a good product, and don’t know how to communicate with customers effectively, essentially having no skills required for the job, but able to talk convincingly to enough of the right people to get hired and keep their jobs.

>people calling themselves producers The music industry has just as big a headache with imposter syndrome, the Flynn factor, and the Peter principle, as any other industry. The issue is that the music industry is extremely exploitative, while being undeniably competitive. You don't get coders going to the extremes that members do, for their art. (Not sure if that is a good or bad thing, personally.) >producers and artists making content that isn’t of the highest quality, but at the end of the day they are creating. Setting an unreasonable bar of skill is not the way forward. Its not skill. Its sell-ability. It doesn't matter if you threw lemons at a piezo and called it done, if someone is willing to pay to listen to it - because it interests them - then you've got a hit. The ability to sell music is a very, very difficult thing to attain. Music is immediately free upon creation. We, of c…