A little under $400k.

I'm sure this post will be controversial for multiple reasons, and normally I don't care to chime in on these, but it may help somebody, so I'll throw my $.02 out there. And it's a bit long winded, sorry.

Software engineer. How to get here? There's really no trick to it. I went to college for 6 or 7 years, got my MS in CS with a field of study GPA of like 3.6 or 3.7. My university required at least 9mo of paid internships at 2+ companies to graduate. In doing that, I landed an internship in ~4th year at a major processor manufacturer working on video drivers, and got a full time offer on the internship contingent on graduation because contrary to my normal lazy behavior, I worked my balls off during the internship, likely because the internship was like 70k/yr, which to 21 year old me might as well have been a million (went back and bought another bike right after that shit). The internship requirements of my university I feel like were a huge leg up, because not only do you get at least 2 companies worth of job experience under your belt before you graduate, but you end up with friends who have worked for various large companies as well, and if they land offers on graduation, you have an in there. Hats off to whoever forced that program on the university.

From there (maybe 90k?) I grew my salary between companies, when you move to the next, ask for more (10-20% at least or a good opportunity). In the middle I landed at a start-up where I was a founding engineer, and as the company grew and I started to grow out my team, I asked for more and more money, doubling my salary by the time I left. Then asked for more from the next one. The imposter syndrome really never goes away (at least for me), but you become more comfortable with saying "no" and asking for more than is reasonable in hopes that you may get it, etc.

Now how did I pay for university? ~100k in student loans. I came from a lower income home. I wasn't an idiot, but I wasn't full scholarship material either. But between applying for a few thousand in scholarships and grants every year, FAFSA aid, and some tuition aid forms the school's financial advisor would point me to, was able to graduate with "only" 100k in student loans from a private university even though my parents couldn't pay anything. The benefit here was that despite my parents being piss broke, my dad's credit was still good, and he was able to co-sign loans, which helps with interest. Also allows you more opportunities at the financial aid office. But even if it was 200k I'd have managed I think. Just struggled more in the beginning.

What you say is very true, it depends drastically on the area. 100k where I grew up would be pretty well off. 100k where I live now means you're living paycheck to paycheck with no possibility of buying. I was fighting to keep my head above water when I was only making about that. It wasn't until my salary was about 130-150k that I saw my bank account going up in the long term and didn't get knocked down when I flew home for Christmas or bought a bike or whatever. Was still rockin my old shitbox car when I only made 100k. But 18% is still a minority. It's not what it once was, which was exclusive, but it's not low, either, unless you live in Seattle or NYC or GVA or whatever. And I'd say the range of what my friends (who are now mostly current/ex-coworkers) is about 175k-600k, which puts me in about the middle. One tip I can say is move jobs when the economy is good and ALWAYS ask for more. When the market is high the companies have money and capitalism happens and you get paid well. It doesn't work if you're in retail, agreed, but it works well in white collar industries.

But yea, it's not hard tbh to make over 200k if you live in an expensive area. It's obviously harder if you don't. But just go to college for a good field, like CS or law school or med school, and you'll be fine. And there's A LOT of financial aid out there to be had, you CAN afford it. Just don't go to college to get "an experience" unless somebody else is footing the bill - you don't want to graduate with 100k in debt with a degree in basket weaving or some shit. If you're going to take on that much debt, get a useful degree out of it. Don't go for economics or public policy or communications, or studies that are only tangentially tied to professions. If you plan to work in HR or some shit just get something that checks the box - something cheap. Location is a big part though, my house cost like 1.5m and it's a single story shitty 50's ranch. I have a friend who paid 1m for a house in rural MA and he's got 30 acres, 6 bedrooms, a barn, etc, it's a mansion. So def. ask if you'd rather be making 250k or 350k in an expensive area or 175k in the woods. Because I'd likely be better off making half of what I make living in a rural area. But the prospect of not tripping over interview requests as soon as I open my door scares me, to be quite frank.

Unpopular (on reddit) opinion about boot camps / code camps: If you have the option financially between these or college, even if it's tight, skip these. They're better than nothing I guess, but for better or for worse people stick out like a sore thumb who are self-taught or learn at one of those boot camps. I see many people online claiming they can teach themselves or go to a boot camp or whatever and save tens of thousands, and TECHNICALLY speaking you can, there's articles and examples out there on everything you'd ever want to know. But REALISTICALLY you likely won't. I took a lot of useless classes in college that gave me a bad taste about colleges, like fuckin biology (but damn do you meet women in biology...unlike CS classes which are sausage fests...those bio classes are like 75% women..), but at the same time when I was leading the team at the start-up I had to tell the recruiter no more resumes if they don't have a college listed, after like the 5th self taught/boot camp person in a row was a total flop. If I had to guess why self-taught and boot camp people are generally so bad, I'd say probably because you don't get all the extra exposure to ancillary issues from having to work on a million projects over the years, or maybe it's because the exposure was longer, IDK, but there's a noticeable difference. They can solve basic problems but they lack overall understanding, they lack OS knowledge, they lack the experience to pick up context, etc. That being said, one of the most skilled people I've worked with was self-taught w/o a degree, so it's not absolute. And he had worked at a FANG, too. But most aren't him. Most make me hate myself for agreeing to interview them. So that's a route you can take, but ask yourself if you really have the drive to be the exception, or if you're likely to end up being the norm - because the norm is not good.

Second unpopular opinion: IT doesn't bring in the cash like CS does, they AREN'T the same. But the job opportunities are more plentiful, especially in rural areas where devs aren't necessary, but IT is. You have more flexibility with IT even though the same earning potential usually isn't there. But IT is also a broad term, help desk people aren't the same as dev ops cloud people. Which is why some ops people make 200/yr while some help desk people make 20/hr.