[kyllo]

Do nothing jobs like HR pay six figures

Not to fresh college graduates, they don't. Six figures in HR is seniority pay.

The vast majority of entry-level office jobs available today pay very poorly compared to junior SDE. An entry-level HR coordinator is typically making ~$20/hour.

[pc86]

Six figures is seniority pay in almost any field outside of medicine, particularly if you exclude the Standford PhD folks going straight to Google, Microsoft, or Amazon.

$20/hr is about $40k a year. I don't live in in a city, so my first job as a developer was $42k a year. I think it's safe the say the developers I worked with provided more value than the HRC.

[TheCoelacanth]

It's not like developers are unique in having lower wages outside of cities. Entry-level HR people in your location probably made significantly less than you.

[kyllo]

If you did live in a city, and you were seeking your first job as a developer today, you could expect your first job to pay at least double that, with just a bachelor's in CS. I live in Seattle and entry-level SDE jobs here typically pay $80k+. I hear that Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Amazon start in the low six figures.

Meanwhile other entry-level office jobs are still around that ~$20/hr or ~$40k/year (depending on whether they're overtime exempt or not) level.