[aaavl2821]

I think there are two interesting correlaries:

1) programming seems to be one of the only "hard" professions that pays well (compared to math researchers, hard science researchers, or even things like some social work -- that's really hard in entirely different ways). Of course I'm probably missing some hard stuff that pays well

2) programming seems to be the "hardest" of the high paying jobs mentioned. Once you get them, banking, consulting and law jobs actually have a lot of mindless or not super challenging work

[fuggedaboudit]

I guess the grass is always greener. I'm a lawyer who lurks here occasionally. Most legal jobs involve 60+ hours of work, being on call 24/7, and there is pretty much no legal equivalent of a 10Xer because almost all work is billed by the hour. There is no way to make a contract that's 10x as valuable as your competitor's, and certainly no legal equivalent of scaling to the degree of Google or Facebook.

Law is incredibly challenging work - I know more than one lawyer who complains that they should have went into programming to work 9-5 at Google between free massages and endless burritos or whatever other perks you guys have. It's certainly not work you can casually do while watching youtube - especially considered there's such a thing as legal malpractice a.k.a. get something less than perfect and you could personally be on the hook for your license. Also, it seems like career longevity in software engineering is a lot higher than in law - most lawyers for the top firms (the Google/Facebook equivalents in pay) wash out by the 4th year and practically all do by the 8th.

I always wondered if I made a mistake picking law over software engineering. I don't have any strong passions and I was good at reading/writing so I went into law, but have been kicking myself for missing out on stock options and equivalent pay for a laid back lifestyle. Glad to see there are programmers who think lawyers have it easy.

[unoti]

Software keeps working after the work is done. That’s the key differentiator, not the brain power. This leads to economies of scale on two fronts.

1) scale for the low end. As an engineer, I’ve made a game where I have customers worldwide that pay me something like 25 cents a week. A lawyer can’t really do work that scales out at the low end like that. It’s not a brain power thing, it’s just the nature of the work product.

2) at the high end, a big company like Google or a financial institution can keep hiring programmers at say $100k, and have them produce tiny detailed enhancements that produce say 150k or or more of revenue per year over a multi year period. Most large systems can always sustain a little more enhancement that will produce an optimization of revenue.

I think this is the key difference between programming and other kinds of work. Programming is scalable at both the low end (distributable to very cheap consumers) and the high end (can always get more revenue through optimization). And at both ends of this spectrum the machine keeps earning money even when the programmer is sleeping or working on a new project.

[Eridrus]

Software doesn't keep running indefinitely. It has a shelf life of a few decades at the most, and usually just a few years.

Programmers definitely have leverage due to scale, but lawyers also have a lot of leverage when dealing with cases that have large $$$ amounts tied to them. Traders obviously have leverage by using large quantities of capital in their trades.

[aaavl2821]

A lawyer can make a small modification to a drug patent that helps a company earn for example $2B a year for 15 years rather than 12

A lawyer can make a change in a corporate structure to lower a company's tax rate indefinitely

From the perspective of lawyers adding value to the law firm, a good lawyer can do this with dozens or hundreds of clients a year, and increase the firms revenue by bringing in tons of new clients. Creative lawyers can also figure out a way to differentiate themselves in a particular sector, like tech startups, and one lawyer who becomes a leader in an area can add millions in rev to the firm a year, for many years, by bringing in new business

Some law firms also take equity, and good decisions about when to do this can bring in huge windfalls

[aaavl2821]

I hear you; I'm only a hobbyist programmer myself. I worked in investment banking at the beginning of my career and did an MBA so know lots of consultants and work a lot with lawyers in my work at startups, and I know those can be grueling jobs and that most people don't make nearly as much as the lucky few at the top firms

I was referring more to the intellectual challenge of the work. In investment banking there is basically no intellectual challenge at a jr level and at senior level it's all relationship management. The trading side can be hard but increasingly that's a programming job

I'm sure there are some super challenging law assignments but from what I understand from friends at top firms there's a lot of template changing and standard cases for a lot of stuff. At startups I try to do as much of that basic work myself so we can save on legal fees. Of course I get lawywers to review / sign off, but it's usually easy for them to do so

But programming is hard at an intellectual level in a way that is different from banking and consulting work and from what I understand, legal work. The first time I did a problem set in C involving memory allocation it took me like 20 hours to get it right. And the engineers working on massive systems that have to run perfectly, fast and be maintainable by hundreds of random people have work that is orders of magnitude harder. In programming, the difficulty of the work seeks to scale as your skill does. Don't know many other professions like that

I interned at google not as a programmer, and you are right that the work life balance there can be amazing, but it probably is the best company in the world for work life balance. Lots of programmers at other companies like work crazy hours as well, and often for non technical bosses or poor managers who make those long hours unpleasant

[badpun]

> I interned at google not as a programmer, and you are right that the work life balance there can be amazing, but it probably is the best company in the world for work life balance.

I'm not convinced. From what I hear, being a developer at Google can actually be stressful, if only for the fact that your peers are likely to be talented and ambitious - so it will take effort to keep on par with them.

Compare that to countless corporations which also hire developers, but where the motivation and talent levels are lower. In many of those jobs, you will be fine with doing maybe 15 hours of real work peer week. I'm not sure it would fly at Google. Based on this, I recently declined an interview invitation from Google recruiter - precisely because I was worried that my work-life balance would plummet.

[BookmarkSaver]

>I'm only a hobbyist programmer myself.

There's also a very important point to be made here. Large-scale software development and self-directed programming have very, very little overlap in terms of time allocation and mental effort. To exaggerate the difference somewhat, it is like comparing building a go-kart in your garage with designing a factory that produces commercial, road-ready cars.

[aaavl2821]

I tried to make that point in the post, though I don't have experience building large scale software. If hobby programming is building a go kart in your garage then the analysis you do in banking is like playing Mario kart :)

There's a huge jump in intellectual challenge of hobby programming vs the analysis you do in investment banking, and I'm sure there's another huge jump between hobby programming and large scale swe. Though I don't know which jump is harder. And I'd imagine that designing the factory in your analogy probably is the work of very experienced engineers, and jr eng is probably more like designing and building the machine that attaches all the wheels as part of a massively complex automated system

[solipsism]

Are you at a top tier law firm? Because you're comparing yourself to programmers at a top tier employer of programmers.

The life of the average programmer certainly does not involve endless burritos or massages, and the compensation is probably below yours.

[fuggedaboudit]

Yep - top tier firms pay roughly the same as tech companies do as far as I can tell (with the added bonus that you don't need 250k in grad school loans to work for Google at an entry level - and a much higher ceiling for the truly, amazingly talent).

Another key difference is that in most top tier law firms, literally 2-3% of every starting class can expect to have a full career there. I've heard tech has a similar concept called stack ranking, but it seems much milder in terms of the forced attrition. Not to mention you don't need a full career at Google - you can always take that resume line and go to another big tech company, a startup or something midmarket. Law is much more segmented. The M&A lawyer laid off during a recession isn't going to find a job at a small firm because those generally do not do M&A.

I don't really hear of top tier software engineers struggling to find work - happens to out of work top tier lawyers all the time.

Oh, and for the record 15% of law school grads get that sweet 180k starting salary (a trajectory most won't stay on).

There are many, many lawyers making 40-60k a year working horrendous hours with no real hope of advancement.

Let me be clear: I have zero doubt in my mind, even with my very limited knowledge of the software engineering market, that I have no doubt the median software engineer is far better off than the median lawyer, likely in terms of pay, hours, and prospects all at the same time.

My question related solely to the top tier because that's where it's even remotely competitive.

[cobbzilla]

"something less than perfect and you could personally be on the hook for your license"

You might get sued by a client, but from what I have seen getting disbarred is really hard to do. Like, you have to blatantly defraud a client or something. Just doing shitty work, or even (as some I have known has acutely experienced) actively screwing over your client in a technically-legal-but-totally-sleazy way, the Bar Association will give you a slap on the wrist, if anything.

[madengr]

Lawyers don’t have the monopoly on 60 hour weeks of deep thinking.

[TheCoelacanth]

Programming is one of the few "hard" jobs that is demanded in very large quantities. There are roughly 1.6 million people working as programmers in the US[1]. That is approximately as many as all engineering professions combined (the largest individual engineering profession is mechanical with 285k). It is roughly 50% more than all life, physical and social sciences combined.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#17-0000

[vostok]

I think I have to disagree with both statements.

banking - extremely long hours with unpredictable work, huge attrition rate (most people who start in banking don't stay in banking), eventual career progression is into sales

consulting - long hours, weekly travel, huge attrition rate (most people who start in consulting don't stay in consulting), eventual career progression is into sales

law - long hours, high attrition rate (most people who start in big law don't stay in big law), eventual career progression is into sales

At least for me software engineering is much easier than any of those.

[aaavl2821]

I agree with your statement but when I said "hard" I meant the work itself was hard rather than the work "lifestyle", if that makes sense

I woerked in banking and agree it is a hard work environment , but getting the deliverables done was easy and not intellectually challenging. From my friends in big consulting and law firms the work sounds similar in nature

[vostok]

That's a good point and I mentioned it because you included social work in your list of hard careers so thought hard doesn't necessarily mean doing hard math/logic/etc.

[aaavl2821]

I think social work is a hard work "lifestyle" but also hard in the sense the problems you are trying to solve are very hard. In banking / consulting advisory work, the problem is making the client happy, which is not easy but not as hard as rapidly scaling a software system, or "solving" the problems like ptsd or homelessness that social workers deal with.

I'm sort of mixing apples and oranges but it makes sense in my head :)

[dsacco]

> 2) programming seems to be the "hardest" of the high paying jobs mentioned. Once you get them, banking, consulting and law jobs actually have a lot of mindless or not super challenging work

Are you saying this as a programmer, or are you saying this as a banker/consultant/lawyer?

[georgeecollins]

Every task is easy to the person who doesn't have to do it. I usually say this to non-technical people when they ask for a feature that sounds simple to do, in their minds. But the same fallacy is at work if you think that highly paid bankers or consultants have mindless work.

[aaavl2821]

A former banker, have also done freelance consulting work and did an MBA do know lots of consultants. I'm relaying things I've heard from lawyers I've worked with in various roles. Am a hobbyist programmer, been doing 10-20 hrs of coding / week the last 18 months, and interned at a FAANG in business roles tho knew some engineers

The stuff you do in investment banking is at least an order of magnitude simpler than making any useful software. It's basically modifying excel templates and debugging complex models, making slide decks that are 80% template slides, and working on deals that are intellectually challenging on occasion but a lot of it is blocking and tackling and managing processes

[regulation_d]

Having been both an attorney and a programmer, the better jobs in both industries will be quite challenging. I personally find writing software much more rewarding than practicing law, but it's certainly not more mentally taxing.

[jimbokun]

"Of course I'm probably missing some hard stuff that pays well"

Hitting major league pitching.

[dagw]

Programming seems to be the "hardest" of the high paying jobs mentioned

Perhaps for some people. Most of what I spend my time on is little more than simple data munging, some trivial analysis and glorified crud apps.