Tech is the Most Lucrative Career: LinkedIn Study (axios.com)

An anonymous reader shares an article: LinkedIn's 2017 U.S. State of Salary report is out, and tech is on top as the most lucrative career. Computer science majors are paid the most, with a median salary of $92,300. Software and IT services is the highest paid industry, with a median total compensation of $104,700.

Comments

At what Experience Level?

[Jfetjunky]

Median of all computer science majors currently working? Or just entry level? 90K entry level is pretty impressive. 90K experienced isn't that impressive considering all STEM.

Sure it is

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

At least until you turn 50.

This is Bull Shit

[Jason1729]

Right through my high school and university days, I heard the exact same story. It's actually why I switched from my goal of science leading either to research or medicine and went for a career in tech.

I graduated from a top tier school in May 2000 with a computer science major and electrical engineering minor. In my last year, I was actively recruited, I got flown across the US for interviews with companies everyone here has heard of. I went to one company's 1999 Christmas party including a private concert by an A-list music group everyone here has heard of; they invited a number of seniors in my class as part of their recruitment effort.

I chose a job that started me just over $60,000 plus stock options which was at the upper end of average for 2000 and had huge potential to take me into 6 figures within a few years. Factoring in my minor, I was writing the firmware for a set top internet appliance (hey it was 2000). A few months after I started the job, the original dotcom bubble burst and I actually only had the job 18 months...not even long enough to cover the cost of my degree.

This was 2001 it was almost impossible to find tech jobs at the time, after about 3 years of unemployment I gave up and took a job at much lower pay where most of my coworkers don't have any degree at all. So, 4 years working my ass off for a degree which cost me over $100k while the arts students working in the coffee shop were out partying and making fun of us for working so hard. All to work 18 months in the industry. Most of my friends from school had been laid off by 2002 and never worked in tech again. The last one lost his job 2 years ago and has been out of work since. So 40 years old, no job, no prospects to ever work in his field again.

Now before you say I'm just an unfortunate case...how many 20-something IT workers do you see? Now how many 50-somethings? Where do you think the rest of us are? You hear stories about companies begging mainframe workers to come out of retirement, again bull shit, that friend who's been out of work has been doing mainframe work for the past 15 years, there is no work in the field.

tl;dr - A tech career is a curse I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Getting a computer science degree from a top tier school is the worst mistake I made in my life.

Re:This is Bull Shit

[Quirkz]

As an anecdote, yours is a rough one. But you almost make it sound like the tech industry hasn't existed for the last 16 years, which definitely isn't true.

My experience started out similar-ish. I had a physics degree instead of CS, but I had several programming classes in college and enjoyed the technical side more. I got a job in '98 building web sites, and was frankly pretty lazy about career development. I knew HTML and some JavaScript, but nothing else. When the bubble popped in '01 I was laid off.

I was unemployed for a year after that, mostly due to lack of trying, as my health, social life, and financial life imploded for half a dozen different reasons. I still did a little freelance work, and also a little carpentry just to keep food on the table, and eventually got a dollar store job just for something steady. But I also realized I needed to learn more, and picked up some PHP programming and MySQL database understanding, and then got a job at a small shop where I was under-employed, but it was still better than the dollar store.

From there I transitioned to tech support, which I didn't want to do, but was much more reliable than the previous job. I angled my way from full-time support to half support and half web work at the same company, and put up with that for three years until I had a good enough resume to get a much better second-tier support job, and after two years of that moved up to server admin, which is relatively cushy.

I'd still prefer to be doing programming or database work, and occasionally I get snippets of that at the office and more at home, but I've also done an admittedly poor job of pursuing those options, instead chasing other hobbies, playing games instead of writing them, and raising a couple of kids. At 42 I'm on the fence as to whether I should get off my butt and get into programming while there's a big enough chunk of time for it to be worthwhile, or whether I should just sit back and ride out the server side of things. (Either way I'm learning things to stay relevant, it's just whether I want to put in a few years of serious off-the-clock work to transition, or take the gentler if slightly less rewarding path.)

Either way, I don't find the argument believable that the field of tech somehow ceased to exist in 2001, or that it wasn't possible to stay in the field since then, or that it's necessarily a terrible career path.

Half of the story

[Nidi62]

While it might be highest in terms of raw numbers, if you take into effect the cost of living in places where tech jobs tend to be located, the actual standard of living afforded by that wage might be lower than for someone working in a career that pay less but is located in a cheaper area.

Self-Selection Bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like LinkedIn is going to suffer from a huge self-selection bias.

How many welders, electricians, and plumbers are using LinkedIn?

Those are all really good paying jobs, and I doubt those are fields which tend to use LinkedIn.

I have doubts about the value of this survey.

Re: Huh.

[cyber-vandal]

So you preferred being out of work for 3 years and ending up outside the industry to taking a lowly programming job? Have I missed something?