The comparison to lawyers is interesting. I don't think law is all that different from software, but would love to hear from those who have more info about the

The comparison to lawyers is interesting. I don't think law is all that different from software, but would love to hear from those who have more info about the software market. Within the law, everyone acknowledges that the market is bimodal. The top new graduates make salaries pretty comparable to entry-level FAANG: just under 200k base to start, going up to the 300+change base toward the end of the "associate" period (7-8 years in), with bonuses adding between 15k at the low end and 100k at the high end.[1] And that's all cash, not stock. (At that level, student the difference in student loan burdens seems like rounding error to me.) Super-senior lawyers at those firms (partners) make significantly more, and probably more than anyone except ultra-ultra-superstar software engineers (like ML people at DeepMind) or moderately successful founders make.[2] Although this conceals a lot of difference, because very successful partners at the richest firms make quite successful founder/NBA money. But it's probably not worth considering those, because it's very hard to make partner at a biglaw firm. Just focusing on the first 7-8 years of biglaw career that gets lawyers to that 3-400k level, the real question is: what % of new law graduates get that kind of job, compared with what % of new CS graduates can get FAANG-level jobs? And how much worse are the outcomes for the non-FAANG-level software engineers vs lawyers? For lawyers, about 15%, give or take, are getting those biglaw jobs---very much concentrated in the top 20 schools or so (basically, you go to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc., you can walk into those jobs; further down the rankings you have to be in some top % of your class). And the median for the others is around 55kish, which is your small firms, your public service jobs (public defender, legal aid, prosecutor, etc.).[3] What does this comparison look for CS grads? Are CS grads at non-top schools mostly getting 60k/year jobs churning out wordpress extensions or are they still making 6 figures? Also, where do CS salaries even for FAANG folks top out? When you're ten years in, are you still getting what you got at 6 years in, for e.g.? [1] https://abovethelaw.com/2018/11/biglaw-firm-announces-bonuses-and-updates-their-salary-scale/ https://abovethelaw.com/2018/11/biglaw-firm-announces-bonuse... (this is one firm, but the high-fi firms tend to be all fairly lockstep with one another) [2] all partner mean in 2016: 877k; equity partners (the real partners) 1.1m---it's probably higher now. Median is a bit lower, however, and there are tons of outliers to drag those means up. https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/department/cdo/document/2016-partner-compensation-survey-web.pdf https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/department/cdo... [3] https://abovethelaw.com/2018/06/the-most-important-chart-in-the-legal-industry-and-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-the-law/ https://abovethelaw.com/2018/06/the-most-important-chart-in-...