I'm not a doctor or lawyer, but I have a terminal degree in my field of study. Sadly my career in my field of study (Visual Art) failed to take off due to financial pressures in the field and in academia during the first term of the second Bush administration. Tech was my fall back career. I was burdened with over 100k of student debt and ended up teaching myself web development over a period of 20+ years, often as on-the-job training. I wish I didn't have the advanced degree. Many doctors wash out as internists or residents and not all lawyers are well compensated and the legal fields that pay well aren't for everyone. As the valley between the haves and have-less grows there are fewer lead bullet paths to success in America. As competition shrinks due to unregulated monopolistic practices in industry the motivation to pay well for traditional jobs is also diminishing. If I regret anything, it's not moving to Scandinavia before college.

OK, I'm not in the cohort you are addressing. After 20+ years in industry, I went back to academia and got my PhD in SE at one of Australia's top unis.

Nothing really changed. Ageism is still a hurdle. While I was in academia my industry contacts have gone stale. Agencies that used to source excellent contracts fail to connect with requirements which are overly specific, e.g. Java, or SAP, or whatever. Having a higher level of knowledge together with decades of experience is not competitive in face of outsourced resources from the big international consulting firms.

I have friends who work/worked for top law firms, consulting firms, some are medical doctors. Most are overworked, burnt out, frustrated with increasingly bureaucratic managements, facing relationship issues, nursing a variety of addictions.

My only piece of advice is: optimize your life for quality not income. Prioritize your health, happiness and relationships.

In short, if you want to do X you need to get the training required to do the work or to be certified as able to do the work. Tech, to date, has been a field where sheer skill coupled with luck enables people to be quite successful without training. Perhaps this’ll change as it continues to age and so move away from the early-progress days.

No, the only upside I see is that I've met people with PhD/JDs who could barely function yet still get weird levels of respect. Even though they're a mess in every obvious way, they're the leader in a given situation. If that appeals to you, the letters can make a big difference.

I know that HN is basically an SV FAANG echo chamber, so when I read a question like this I assume it’s asked from that standpoint. This world where someone graduates from Waterloo, comes to SV and gets a job immediately making six figures with a seven figure stock future when the company makes it. The tech world is so much bigger than that. I’ve been in tech since the mid 90s. I bring home a base salary of 190K and get a nice COL every year and a decent bonus if the company does well. I’ve been at this company 21 years. A nice, simple, life of 40hr work weeks, working from home, but will try to go in every Wednesday to see the rest of the team. This to me is the real world of tech, and I’m among a few hundred of devs like me in Atlanta just enjoying our Staff Software jobs. So when I hear about devs hating that they no longer get overpaid I just have to laugh. I think the industry will be better if we get back to people doing it for the love of the craft instead of getting that big paycheck to brag about. A lot of my neighbors are PHDs working at the CDC, DOE or FDA. They aren’t enjoying life at the moment. There is not magical degree/job. Find something you enjoy instead of being so caught up in the money. Glad I am a decade or less away from retirement, as the past decade of over privileged devs has made this profession a joke.

Base of 190k + bonus? In the Atlanta area? Working from home? With job security? Sounds great.

> I know that HN is basically an SV FAANG echo chamber, so when I read a question like this I assume it’s asked from that standpoint

I mean, this is a message board unwritten by YC. It be strange expect anything else.

> Glad I am a decade or less away from retirement, as the past decade of over privileged devs has made this profession a joke.

I write this through the prism of someone 20 years younger than you (35) will be curious to see the state of the industry when I’m where you are. Looking for ways to take my tech skills and leverage them in less tech savvy industries (I never want to work for a company that makes SaaS tools and sells them to SaaS companies)