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Is Programming a Lucrative Profession?
itwbennett writes "A pamphlet distributed by blogger Cameron Laird's local high school proclaimed that 'Computer Science BS graduates can expect an annual salary from $54,000-$74,000. Starting salaries for MS and PhD graduates can be to up to $100,000' and 'employment of computer scientists is expected to grow by 24 percent from 2010 to 2018.' The pamphlet lists The US Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics as a reference, so how wrong can it be? 'This is so wrong, I don't know where to start,' says Laird. 'There are a lot of ways to look at the figures, but only the most skewed ones come up with starting salaries approaching $60,000 annually, and I see plenty of programmers in the US working for less,' says Laird. At issue, though, isn't so much inaccurate salary information as what is happening to programming as a career: 'Professionalization of programmers nowadays strikes chords more like those familiar to auto mechanics or nurses than the knowledge workers we once thought we were,' writes Laird, 'we're expected to pay for our own tools, we're increasingly bound by legal entanglements, H1B accumulates degrading tales, and hyperspecialization dominates hiring decisions.'"
Protip:
When you hear about "easy street", that means it's long gone.
- Somone who moved to SF in 1997 and watched the slaughter
Facebook is the new AOL
The US Government lives in fantasy land. They created the Tech Bubble, Housing Bubble, and in hindsight can't even figure out why either happened. They believe that the unemployment rate can go down while the number of people employed goes down. The Tech bubble has given our industry a plethora of incompetence chasing after that "lucrative" salary. In reality most software engineers I know do alright, but none are wealthy and ALL are pretty miserable(mostly from the 70-80 hour weeks).