Are you comparing average doctors or lawyers to the highest-paid and most career-motivated and personal-life-sacrificing programmers? Because other professions

Are you comparing average doctors or lawyers to the highest-paid and most career-motivated and personal-life-sacrificing programmers? Because other professions can be strategic too. E.g. the median income for patent lawyers or many medical specialties blows IT away. And those professional credentials are still valuable when you're 50 or 60, while your hot programming skills from your school days will have become an outsourced commodity that hiring managers deem worthless.