It's really not that uncommon to see software engineers in the US with 3-5 years of experience making >$300K--about what a doctor would make, except without having to go to school for 12 years to do so.
It's kind of unfathomable why someone might choose a career in investment banking, or management consulting, or any other engineering profession, which might require very long hours, extensive certifications, hostile work environments, etc. over a career as a software engineer or product manager. That is, unless they don't realize they can make at least as much or more in tech.
I used to work at a company that had a hiring pipeline that took people with zero skills and trained them up to high paid tech workers in a few short years.
It haunts me I can't convince more people to pursue this path.
I think you don't understand what an order of magnitude means.
Also..maybe it’s not always about the money. I also find it rather charming that you think a SWE would not have to deal with long hours or certifications or hostile work environment.
Also most Software Engineers outside of the US don't make that much money either. I've been working for about a decade and if I don't work as a consultant getting high five figures in the UK is difficult outside of London. The UK pays better than many other countries, but not nearly as well as the US.
That combined with working with people that are short-sighted, lazy or are unwilling to learn anything beyond basics leads to frustration, burn-out and depression when you want to produce something that is moderately decent.
Also the job has almost no prestige to it. Many people have no conception of it and even if they do it is usually a poor one thanks to decades of shoddy software (and the churn related to it) being pushed into their work and/or personal lives.
And I'm currently receiving offers for double the salary for remote work with startups in the US.
What's even crazier is that i still have a great work life balance, work from home and the culture is ten times better than what I've seen on other industries in my country.
I can't think of an equivalent industry for self taughts or dropouts.
I've thought about it quite a lot throughout my career. I'm an avid programmer, but have not held a programming job per se. In my view it's not a slam dunk that anybody can make it in programming. I work alongside programmers. I see what they do all day. To me, it's easy but boring. I follow HN. I think you either have to figure out a way to make it exciting for yourself, or have a personality that can tolerate sheer boredom without burning out quickly.
I can make programming exciting for myself when it's in the service of something else that I'm interested in (like math and physics), but not as an end unto itself.
I've explained it to my kids, and they can grasp what I'm talking about, but neither of them is motivated by it.
Without a credible prospect of becoming a programmer myself, it becomes basically invisible to me, like living in a poor country that borders on a rich country. Unless you can actually move across the border, there's no reason to fret about the disparity.
It's interesting to look at the same question from a cost perspective: How can you control the cost of programming? On a personal level, I use software, but it's all free. At my job, I'm self sufficient for the programming needed to support my own job, and the programming department is like that rich country across the border.
There is a multi-year process of training and selection. You need to take risks and invest and learn to bend your mind in certain ways. Some people cannot bear this, or just bored out of their minds and cannot continue and get back to living their "normal" lives with less risk of depression or mental breakdown.
Those who survive, make decent money, and some even more than decent money.
So what's wrong with this picture?
As for why it is unfathomable why someone might choose another career: we don't realize the work SWEs do is not that easy. We are always surrounded by nerdy SWE types, so we don't realize how averse most people are to programming in general.
I have tried helping some friends get into tech by spoon-feeding them all I know about the industry, but they just don't want to code.
...or, they just don't want to be a software engineer or product manager?
1. you. you are likely successful and in a bubble near other successful people giving the perception of $300k being common. Let's be generous and say there are 1M SWEs in the USA, avg. salary is $150k and 1% of them make >$300k. That's 10k total people. It's hard to find concrete data, but it's also hard to imagine the proportions being more generous than that.
2. stocks. a large part of total comp -- up until recently they were at ATH's. This won't last forever.
3. recency bias. SWE is still a relatively young profession. I'm not convinced we'll be as hot or trendy or well payed 5-10 years from now as the labor supply grow and automation continues to take over.
Overall I'm not convinced this field is as solid of a bet as it once was -- at least relative to other fields.
This is really only the case at the top tech companies and you have to bust your ass to get in. Most software jobs are not that.
It’s a matter of finding the companies (and divisions within those companies) that have realized software is a money making system and are willing to put dollars into the machine. The industry is much less relevant than it was just 5 years ago.
I am currently traveling the world and doing programming as a freelancer at the same time. My daily salary is 3 times the monthly salary of where I am currently living.
I have no idea how gouvernements are going to regulate this in the future but it’s insane.
I'm losing faith in the legal profession.
Noticing a lot of career switches where people who started off in one career are now getting into tech by targeting different roles like Sales, Product Management, and Marketing. This is starting to become more commonplace and will be interesting to see how it continues to pan out. Generally it seems tech is still talent side constrained, and companies’ competitive advantage is to find new ways to up-skill and hire new talent from outside of the industry / college grads.