[deanmoriarty]

With regards to teachers or photographers, that's not a fair comparison in my opinion: in those cases, low wages are mostly dictated by high supply vs low demand, so from an economic point of view it "makes sense". That's much different than software engineering or medicine, where there is a scarcity of supply (and the only reason why software salaries are in the 6 figures).

In other words, teachers are not willingly giving up a portion of the compensation that they could otherwise be making doing the same job somewhere else. In software instead, that happens ("Oh, you work on FOO v2.0, I'll happily take 40% less than what I could otherwise be making doing this job in another company").

I don't know about public defenders, you might have a point there.

[apersona]

From my perspective it looks like a good amount of teachers decided to give up a portion of the compensation earlier (i.e. they gave up good pay not when they're looking for another job in an industry they're already in, but they decided to give up good pay upon joining the industry).

It's like how artists/writers/game developers/etc. decide to go into their field even though they know that they could be making much more money in any other field.

[BigJono]

It's still just supply and demand. Sexier products draw more candidates. The only reason you're taking 40% less to work on something cool is because if you don't, someone else will.

Most people eventually have to decide whether they want to make 150k writing CRUD apps or 90k writing algorithms.