[vaksel]

I disagree completely.

Unlike other jobs, you need to always update your skills, learning new languages.

And there is no safety, since your position can always be outsourced by an MBA who wants to save the company a few bucks.

And thanks to blackberry/remote computing, you are pretty much always connected to your job...and can be called in to work at night, on the weekends...and any time your boss pleases.

And there is a huge age bias...so the longer you work, the worse off you are going to be.

And unlike other jobs, with programming, your salary tends to peak early. 5 years experience? $100,000. 15 years experience? $115,000

So sure...programming pays well...but not really as much as you are worth. There are plenty of jobs that will both pay you more, require less hours, require less commitment, and will be a very safe career(from outsourcing)

I mean sure...programmers make a decent salary...but let's not fool ourselves into thinking we struck some sort of lottery by deciding to go into programming.

[dasil003]

Last time I checked median income across the US population was around $50k, so maybe you should count your blessings.

Also what does constantly being on-call have to do with programming? Plenty of professionals have to deal with this across the board. And plenty of programmers don't have to.

[juddlyon]

"There are plenty of jobs that will both pay you more, require less hours, require less commitment, and will be a very safe career(from outsourcing)."

Tell me more!

[moocow01]

I'd imagine he is referring to sales/business/management roles which can tick a lot of those boxes in many cases but the type of work might drive a lot of engineer-types insane

[skerrit_bwoy]

Any of the medical careers, from nursing to MD to podiatrist to dentist.

T14 law school and BIGLAW.

MBB consulting drone and then BigCo Apparatchik.

Buy-side finance, like equity research, portfolio manager, private equity, etc.

Commissioned officer in the US military.

CPA Accountant.

Patent attorney.

[potatolicious]

I can't speak for some of the items on that list, but I call BS on the medical jobs. I know some doctors and dentists, and let me tell ya, the only thing they've got on engineers is the pay (and even then, sometimes not). They've got an order of magnitude more stress, worse hours, and way more required commitment than even the worst coding job I've ever had.

[skerrit_bwoy]

lol when you get laid off at 50 and they continue to pull $200k we'll see who's got more stress