Even in the U.S. I’m not sure where this myth of SWE being the most well paid industry comes from. Try many finance jobs and big law, also medicine in certain specializations. They all pay much better than 95% of all software engineering jobs. It’s also well known that to be an incredibly high paid SWE, you need to be at a large public tech company. That means you’re making a huge bet on their stock - the folks making bank there do so because their equity has appreciated massively. I think one reason for the pervasiveness of this myth is that engineers talk about the fact that they are paid well. Folks in other industries are much quieter about it.
Software is one of the best paid and fastest growing fields that doesn't require a post-graduate degree plus years of resident/associate toil before you pay off those student loans and start getting ahead. Finance might be even better, but not everyone has the stomach for it. There are a lot of very unpleasant people and attitudes to deal with. A lot of the worst tech-bro-ism comes from contact with finance.
> the folks making bank there do so because their equity has appreciated massively
That's not entirely true. The salary scale is way higher than other places. For example, just my salary at one of those companies is higher than my total comp at a company outside the circle, and I was well paid by any standard there.
> one reason for the pervasiveness of this myth
It's always possible to look up at people making even more, and feel like you're not paid well enough by comparison. But it's also worth considering the many times more people making less, compared to which we're very well paid indeed. For some of us, the empathy outweighs the envy.
I generally agree with you. But many people say that software engineering de facto pays the best without acknowledging other options. I also think opinions are colored by media and public opinion. I’ve met many, many investment bankers, and 98% of them are really nice people that I enjoy hanging out with. Fundamentally I think people need to examine their skill set and the work environment in which they thrive the most in order to pick a career that will be most fruitful with them.
> Even in the U.S. I’m not sure where this myth of SWE being the most well paid industry comes from.
Because it basically is.
> Try many finance jobs and big law, also medicine in certain specializations.
Selected finance jobs aren't an industry, neither is “medicine in certain specializations”, neither is big law (law as a whole is an industry).
> It’s also well known that to be an incredibly high paid SWE, you need to be at a large public tech company
To be incredibly highly paid within SWE, sure. SWE is still highly paid compared to the rest of the world outside of those firms, and an unusually accessible high-paying field, without any post-baccalaureate education requirement, or even a firm requirement for an in-field bachelor's degree.
Note that there are similar (and often much bigger) cliffs in other highly-paid industries (which your allusion to “big law” implicitly recognizes.)
The high-paying finance and big-law jobs are exceptionally competitive. You have to compare that to the pay at highly competitive jobs like at FANG, not just a bog-standard SWE job.
High-paying medical specializations take far more education than SWE does. You start your career at 30, not at 22 like SWEs do.
> Try many finance jobs and big law, also medicine in certain specializations. They all pay much better than 95% of all software engineering jobs.
But the stress levels and amount of hours you have to put in for both finance and law are exponentially higher than being a SWE. I honestly can't remember the last time I had to work 60-70 hour weeks, non-stop for months on end as a developer. The amount of stress in those industries also pales in comparison to the stress of being a SWE.
