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.

Re: At what Experience Level?

[Aighearach]

You should really upgrade your English comprehension. As a published author, creimer could probably help you if you asked nicely enough.

Basically, hyphens have no banned usage. That is merely a matter of style. Where they are required, they are required only to maintain internal consistency. To actually be incorrect, it would have to change the meaning in a way that would conflict with the rest of the statement; pretty much impossible here where the phrase is parenthesized.

So, while your complaint is horseshit from the start simply by its form, (attempting to correct something that is a matter of style) it is also wrong in that normally pedants would report the best usage as being the way he already wrote it; your correction is still not an error, it is just in poor style. And taste, but that is another matter and is probably hopeless. Here, he used the age as a noun that retells "older friend." When using the age as a noun, as in "a 54-year-old," then you should hyphenate. Had he worked the age into a smoother sentence the non-hyphenated version might have been preferred; but who spends that much time word-smithing a slashdot comment?

His actual technical error was simply that "years" should have been singular.

Keep trying, you'll be fluent soon, and who knows, maybe you'll even advance enough to fulfill your childhood dream of being a real credentialed blog editor!

Sure it is

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

At least until you turn 50.

Re:Sure it is

[swillden]

At least until you turn 50.

I'm 48, so I guess I'd better be worried?

Nah. I see this complaint all the time, but in all my 30 years in the industry I've never actually seen it, at least for software engineers. If you can solve hard problems and write good code, you can work, and get paid well for it.

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.

Re:This is Bull Shit

[110010001000]

Right. No one can get jobs in tech since the year 2000. I hate these whiny "anecdotes". There are literally millions of tech jobs. What "top tier" university did you graduate from?

Nor should we be surprised [Re: gender balance...

[XXongo]

Article quoted below. Clearly a woman wrote this. An angry disgruntled woman.

Men are greatly overrepresented in the highest-paying industries. Software and hardware tech industries pay the most and have over twice as many males than females. ...

Well, obsession with computers is stereotypically an attractor for people who are autistic (or at least Asperger's)*, antisocial, or obsessive-compulsive (or all of the above). Since autism is overwhelmingly a syndrome affecting males*, this is not surprising.

(and, while being antisocial is something I suppose could be either male or female, in females our society strongly disapproves of it, while in males being antisocial is considered "rugged individualism.")

*Citation: https://autism-help.org/interv... "OBSESSIVE USE OF COMPUTERS BY AUTISTIC CHILDREN... for Autism or Asperger's syndrome, a child can become obsessed with computers..."
https://forums.psychcentral.com/attention-deficit-disorder-add-adhd/275768-computer-rules-hidden-danger-children-adhd-autism.html "As you may have noticed, children with a disorder that falls on the autism spectrum seem to have an intense love of computers."

**citation: http://www.autism.org.uk/about...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4164392/

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.

And yet...

[ZiggieTheGreat]

I've been working in IT for 20 years. I would love the median salary mentioned.
It all comes down to location (MidWest), skills (plenty o' them), and adaptability (plenty).

I've also, for 20 years, been the youngest member of my team everywhere I go. I'm now nearly 40 and I'm still the young'un.

Get off the coasts, the rest of the country has plenty of work for people.

Yeah says linkedin

[coolmoe2]

Other stories could be

"Study says petroleum jobs most lucrative" --BP
"Study says telco jobs most lucrative" --AT&T

I could go on like that forever but I think you get the point.

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?

What The Fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most lucrative?

Oh, you mean after medicine, management, finance...

This entire article is LinkeIn clickbait pandering to their target market.

Re: Huh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignore him. He has issues the main one of which is he has narrowly defined "tech industry" to mean the field he wanted to go into. With his degrees, he has a huge selection of fields but those are all beneath him.

I went to a Christmas part where an A-list band was that we have all heard of...

I worked for a company that we have all heard of...

The guy is a bit off his rocker, throwing out meaningless drivel to drive his ego and blame others for the fact he can't get a job in the field he wanted. He got a tech degree, went into a field that was a limited narrow focus and when that field dried up, rather then look to another field that his degrees applied to, he instead proceeded to say life sucks, I can't get a job and he left.

I can think of about 5 fields, including the one I am working in, where he would be able to get a job in a heart beat. It would have been starting over and working up the ladder, but he could have been up to his 6 figure salary in a few years in a stable market where there is a shortage.

Re: Huh.

[OhPlz]

What do you mean, "what you were promised"? The only thing a college degree promises you is that you have to pay for the schooling to get it. You sound like an entitled twat that doesn't want to code because it's for the lesser people and you have disdain for any job that isn't exactly your dream vision of what your job should be. That probably explains why you can't find an agreeable position, if that attitude comes out in interviews or phone screens. Many companies don't want or need a high level guy that's too good to get into code.

Re: Huh.

[Junta]

Unemployed looks worse than a 'programmer'. Realistically speaking, folks don't know what a candidate may mean when they cal themselves a 'software engineer' versus 'architect' versus 'programmer', because people self identify in various ways and are given various titles for similar work, so being in the general ballpark is going to get you in the door unless there's just an overwhelming number of candidates. Once in the door, then a more nuanced contemplation of your knowledge and experience happens.

But even then, generally people who are not known get hired for entry level positions, because even then it's risky to base a high paid position on someone based on assessment over the course of an interview. Certainly a lack of relevant work experience will lead to being saddled with jobs that are beneath you. Besides, in general people will get asked to do something that might be 'beneath them' and a candidate who seems too good to ever put up with that is a candidate who just isn't worth it, and refusing an entry level job in spite of lack of experience is certainly a way to prove that you might be frustrating.

Does that include everyone dumped at age 45+?

[Maxo-Texas]

I was in tech- and as early as 1985 saw older 45 year old programmers dumped and pushed out of the field.

I saved hard and retired at 51 - when hundreds of co-workers were dumped out on the street (and out of the career).

IT is a nice 20 year career. After that, you are increasingly likely to be age discriminated out of a job regardless of how current you keep your skills.

Save hard and be ready when the end reaches you. Be happy if you are one of the lucky few who makes it into their 60s in IT.

Re:Does that include everyone dumped at age 45+?

[Tablizer]

After that, you are increasingly likely to be age discriminated out of a job regardless of how current you keep your skills.

Part of it is that when one is experienced, it's hard to be exuberant about stupid IT fads that PHB's or bullshit artists push on the organization. "Oh boy! Another stupid fad to drain time and money! Weeeee!" Newbies don't know any better: ignorance is bliss, and it's hard to fake bliss in such a workplace. How does one stay enthusiastic about wasteful fads? Take happy-pills after 45?

Re:How do you guys earn 80-110K a year?

[apoc.famine]

The tech jobs in the US (especially those that end up getting surveyed like this) are concentrated in a few big cities on the coasts, where the costs of living are 2x-3x the rest of the country. Thus the salaries are 2x-3x the rest of the country. Also keep in mind that with minimal social programs, we need to pay for a lot more things, many of them provided by for-profit companies which charge a lot more. And those for-profit companies hire people and pay them lots of money.