[vonseel]

Of course, high salaries will attract more supply over time, which will put pressure back down on salaries. The current dynamic is SO out of whack though- there is a ton of slack in the system.

I understand all of this.

Are there any examples of industries where - for lack of better terminology - a salary "bubble" formed and later popped? For example, X job used to pay 100k and now it pays 50k? Probably better to exclude jobs that aren't around anymore because they were replaced by automation or don't make sense because of modern technology, at least for this question.

I guess I have an inkling that - ignoring things like economic downturns and lowering salaries due to high unemployment - employees will fight back against any downward pressure on pay, and once salaries go up, they tend to stay up. Sort of similar to what you see when an individual gets raises and jumps companies for an income boost - you rarely see someone take a job paying less than their current job.

All that reminds me of how people who graduate during recessions earn lower income over their careers[1].

[1] https://hbr.org/2018/09/people-who-graduate-during-recession...

[_bxg1]

I've heard this basically happened with Law. 20 years ago lawyers were raking it in and everyone wanted to be a lawyer. Today an entry-level lawyer makes less the half what an entry-level programmer does, and with twice the student loans. There's a glut in the market. My girlfriend was a lawyer for a couple years before doing a bootcamp and she almost instantly started making three times what she used to. It's crazy.

[vonseel]

I thought a lot of the pay changes with lawyers was due to tort reform and caps on punitive damages, but I am basing that purely on vague memory.

To be fair, first year lawyers at top firms do earn comparable pay to programmers at good companies, maybe not as much as a full compensation package with equity, I’m not sure. But those lawyers who consistently rank at the top of their class and among their peers and stick it out and eventually make partner - they will make much more money than the average software engineer. See this link for some details on what top Texas firms are paying associates [0]. Partners at the big firms make a lot more than 190-300k - probably 2-3x.

The catch is that with law or investment banking you need to be at the top of your class and pedigree matters if you want to get the best jobs. With software engineering these days, a degree is becoming less and less important.

I think at the end of the day the person who enjoys being a lawyer is a very different type than the person who enjoys being a software engineer / coder, and I’d be surprised if there’s much overlap between the two. I’m sure some people can be good at both, and certainly most good developers have the brains to get through law school and pass a test, but the work is so drastically different many people just won’t be happy in the job, and, like what possibly happened to your girlfriend, they move on.

[0] https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2018/06/25/major-te...

[ghaff]

For a long time, law was also a thing that a lot of liberal arts majors from good schools sort of fell into when they had trouble turning their English or History degrees into a decent living.

Big Law still pays pretty well--although I assume the associate work life is as punishing as ever--but it's probably not a great career path in general for someone who is mostly chasing the dollars.

[jefftk]

We saw this with programmers and the dot-com bubble. There was briefly really high demand and high pay, and then when funding suddenly disappeared there were massive shutdowns and layoffs. Many devs couldn't find work for years, and the market wage was much lower because there were so many extra devs. (College CS enrollment also plummeted then, which is one hypothesis for why CS training has been slow to scale up to current demand.)

Automotive factory work is another example, I think. Something like: there were high wages (with unions) in Detroit factories, and then competition first from overseas and from other US states led to a collapse in pay (along with a general collapse in Detroit).

I haven't looked into it, but I suspect that there was a time when some railroad workers were very well paid, which then went bust when one of the railroad bubbles popped.

[_bxg1]

I do feel that the dot com bubble was different. In that case, the whole industry was brought into doubt. "Maybe this whole internet thing isn't all it's cracked up to be." That notion is clearly ridiculous in 2019.

The much scarier "bubble" today is "actually most of this stuff isn't all that hard". There are probably also smaller bubbles to be had in AI, blockchain, venture capital, etc., but I don't think those will be nearly as broad-reaching as dot com.

[ghaff]

The thing with dot-bomb was that there were cascading effects. All those startups were buying gear from the "Four Horsemen of the Internet" so their collapse brought down a bunch of the large firms as well. (And it was all mixed in with 9/11, etc.)

Today, even if there were a big ad-tech collapse, a bunch of highly paid Bay Area engineers might end up having to move back to Ohio but I'm not sure you have the same overall economic effects. (And, if it's mostly just a drying up of VC capital, the effects are even less.)

[JackMorgan]

Airline pilots real wages have been decreasing for a long time. Starting pilot out of flight school makes like 28k for a lot of hours a week.

[vonseel]

Yeah, I’m slightly familiar with that. Flying is a bit unusual since training is so much more expensive than other professions, and requires a lot of hours, so I guess you can consider the first few years like a medical residency. A low-paid training job.

http://www.aacadetacademy.com/CadetAcademy/career_progressio...

AA has an interesting program here, but I still think the best route for aspiring pilots, if you can get a pilot spot, is probably Air Force Academy. It’s very hard to get a pilot spot, though, and I don’t think it’s ever guaranteed unless you do the Army Street to Seat flight program, which does not require a college degree, but they mainly fly helicopters (maybe only?).

I often wish I had been a pilot... currently reading “Viper Pilot” by Dan Hampton which is a hell of a book.

[sudosysgen]

Yes, and the consequence is that there is a shortage of pilots and prices are rising back up.

[OJFord]

It's usually less exaggerated than that - stagnation while inflation or salary increases in other fields are higher.