I imagine your parents are pretty thrilled that you can pull down 90k so early in your career. It likely took them much longer to get to almost double the avera

I imagine your parents are pretty thrilled that you can pull down 90k so early in your career. It likely took them much longer to get to almost double the average household income of the US. The thing is, for lots of programmers the peak is early. This is a young man's sector. By the time you are 30 you will need to start thinking about getting into management or some other non-programminng job. Otherwise when the cutbacks come and your get laid off, you will find it much harder to find a job. It also gets harder to keep up with new technologies as you get older. Partly because your mind starts to slow a little, partly because your learning time gets replaced with family time as you have a wife and kids. So, you decide to go into management. What are the odds of that? 1 in 10? Not great. Maybe you believe in yourself so much that you know you will be the one out of ten, and then the one out of ten that then make it to some sort of executive tech role. Likewise, I think a lot of people here feel that what about their odds at startups. Neither one is any more or less crazy than the other. Last week I went into an office supply store to make some copies. The guy behind the counter was one of the first senior programmers I had ever worked with,