I think Lawyers and Doctors I think are much similar to programmers than you think. Regular front line grunt work employees work long hours and get paid decent

I think Lawyers and Doctors I think are much similar to programmers than you think. Regular front line grunt work employees work long hours and get paid decent professional wage. As you said they can get promoted to Partner, a partner is a part owner of the business, they don't do much technical work, they do a lot of management. There are similar opportunities for Software people to start small companies and make money too. its not quite the same as there aren't the big company partnerships, but big startups with employee stock are close. The biggest difference is the half life of knowledge in Software is much shorter.