[flexie]

Law is a middle class profession for most lawyers. Very few lawyers make anywhere near $1M per year. I guess that the number of US attorneys consistently making $1M yearly is in the hundreds or low thousands.

Median salary for lawyers is $113,530. That's a pay most lawyers don't achieve until they are in their late 30s or 40s.

Top 10 percentile is at $187,200.

Most lawyers spend 4 years in college and then 3 years in law school to land a $60,000 dollar job in their late 20s. Then they spend another 5-10 years paying off the student loans. Many programmers make that kind of money in their early 20s without any formal education.

Also, it's too early to say at what age programmers are "done". There were few developers in the 1970's and 1980's and they are now nearing retirement. Let's wait and see how it goes with the bigger generation of developers that are now in their 20s and 30s. My guess is that many of them will continue until retirement.

Source: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/legal/lawyers.htm#tab-5

[pc86]

Programming also seems like a pretty clear path to management (if that's your goal), which is one of the best upper-middle class professions there is. And once you've proven the ability to manage a team it is much easier to translate that into non-technical management, which opens you up to a plethora of different positions, particularly if you have advanced education (e.g. MBA or similar).

[cookiecaper]

Management requires an entirely different skillset than programming, and one that many programmers are not well-suited for.

Management is not about selecting objectively good tools, and it's not about making hard choices or settling disputes. It's about keeping everyone that works for your employer happy, which is, frankly, 95% about the superficial.

[jazzyk]

A fair number of developers transition to management, but I would not call the path "pretty clear". It is much less clear than for project managers, program managers, etc.