I worked for a sexy startup (non AI and didn't steal user data, but did have ads) that got bought by one of these big hard-STEM companies. The scientists there

I worked for a sexy startup (non AI and didn't steal user data, but did have ads) that got bought by one of these big hard-STEM companies. The scientists there who had 15 YOE and a PhD made less than programmers on our side with no college degree and 2-3 years of experience programming. Hard-STEM seems to have lots of jobs where you can grind your ass off for the better part of a decade or two and hope to make $100-120k/yr by then if you're lucky. At least on the coding side you'll get to that level within a handful of years if you're willing to job switch often and optimize for that salary. Glad to hear there's at least one hard-STEM place where the grind isn't as bad.