Luxury is relative, is it not? Working in a posh office with a very comfortable salary, very lenient management, and extensive benefits straight out of college is a hell of a lot nicer than laboring in a mine in your 40s, struggling to put food on the table, having no advancement opportunities whatsoever, and rather than getting health care benefits actually suffering health-wise due to the intensity of the labor.
Of course, nobody I know works in a mine. But my job is still generally a bit nicer in most ways than that of all of my friends outside of technology. I realized this when it occurred to me that I worked half as much as my friend who is a physician in residency and yet I actually am paid more. That's kind of ridiculous, isn't it? Of course, he'll get a big pay bump when he finishes residency--but that'll be several years from now, and if things keep going the way they are, my pay will jump up a lot as well.
So let me rephrase that: seasoned developers in Silicon Valley are paid as much or more than licensed family physicians. To find the doctors who beat us squarely in pay, you have to start looking at the radiologists and the surgeons.
A few years ago, I was the math equivalent of the aimless college poet who tugged at his heart for guidance but felt nothing. The poet is now working for nearly minimum wage and I'm now making more than my parents combined. Let's face it: I lucked out. Not as much as Mark Zuckerberg and other billionaires, but relative to most people--definitely.
I don't know if you lucked out. You chose a market-friendly position which you are mentally equipped to do. You might have lucked out in being born in America and being in a stable enough financial position to pursue that career - but after that, it is as much careful planning and work as it is anything else.
Poets choose to be poets knowing that they will most likely never be on stable financial ground. That is not unlucky, it's simply a hardship they've chosen to accept in pursuit of something they'd rather attain than wealth and ease of life.
> Poets choose to be poets knowing that they will most likely never be on stable financial ground.
I chose to major in math without the expectation of ever having some great financial payoff for the choice. I was so ignorant of money at the time that when I made that decision I probably would have considered $40k a huge salary. I was interested in programming when I was 12 and didn't have the slightest care in the world about money.
I feel pretty lucky that interests that I've cultivated since a young age happened to turn into a high-paying comfortable career. I easily could have been like most of my friends and instead had interests that fulfilled me intellectually but didn't pay much at all.
Of course, nobody I know works in a mine. But my job is still generally a bit nicer in most ways than that of all of my friends outside of technology. I realized this when it occurred to me that I worked half as much as my friend who is a physician in residency and yet I actually am paid more. That's kind of ridiculous, isn't it? Of course, he'll get a big pay bump when he finishes residency--but that'll be several years from now, and if things keep going the way they are, my pay will jump up a lot as well.
So let me rephrase that: seasoned developers in Silicon Valley are paid as much or more than licensed family physicians. To find the doctors who beat us squarely in pay, you have to start looking at the radiologists and the surgeons.
A few years ago, I was the math equivalent of the aimless college poet who tugged at his heart for guidance but felt nothing. The poet is now working for nearly minimum wage and I'm now making more than my parents combined. Let's face it: I lucked out. Not as much as Mark Zuckerberg and other billionaires, but relative to most people--definitely.