Unity reveals plans to charge developers per game install - plans revoked and CEO fired, lol

[thesecret1]

You need programmers either way, but when the bulk of the workload in creating the engine itself is done they can focus on other things. Do you think they just sit around twiddling their thumbs otherwise?

Programmers making an engine and programmers making a game are different kind of programmers. It's like arguing that when neurosurgeons don't have any patients, they go help out the veterinarians. Once the engine is done, they typically continue expanding and maintaining it.

You seem to think that programmers in video games do it for the money and that you can just throw any task on them and they'll do it. They don't. Video games are one of the worst-paid fields in IT. If you do it for the money, you're better off virtually anywhere else. You'll do a way easier job for way more money. Programmers in video games typically work there because they like games and find it fun. If you make them do something they don't find fun, they quit and go to a different company – it's normal for a good chunk of the programming team to quit right after a game is released, for example, as they decide their work there is done and it's time to go work on a different game for some other studio.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Video games are one of the worst-paid fields in IT. If you do it for the money, you're better off virtually anywhere else. You'll do a way easier job for way more money.

Very much this, and in fact most developers in the event of a studio failure are paid under the legal minimum due to unpaid wages and insolvent trading.
I basically did the Chris Crawford quote for real where he stated that being a game designer pays poorly compared to being a teacher so he'd rather be a teacher. He's right and I did that.

Programmers making an engine and programmers making a game are different kind of programmers.

This is very true, and even further a tech artist is different yet again because they're implementing tools for the pipeline - not the pipeline itself which is where they differ with Engine developers.
And even within game programming its also split within discipline as well, a UI programmer for example wouldn't be programming AI logic.