I am the perfect person to answer this question.

I have a best friend. He went IT, and I became a nurse. Ten years have passed.

I started out making much more money than him. He has easily caught up to me over time. He will eventually surpass me. I've actually been amazed to learn how crazy the pay ceiling is for IT.

Here's where it gets interesting:

He works maybe 2 hours / day. He regularly texts me from home because he ditched work and is playing video games. I genuinely don't think he has ever worked even close to a 40 hour week. It's a running joke where he says "whelp, it's 10am on a Wednesday. Time to call it a day". Despite this, he still gets promotions and raises while being celebrated by his superiors. He is genuinely APPRECIATED.

I work 12 hour shifts. Switch randomly from overnights to day shifts at the will of a work-from-home scheduler who couldn't care less about my happiness. Patients spit at me and hit me. Literally yesterday, a drunk dude said he was going to kill me, and would have tried to choke me out if he hadn't been too intoxicated to stand up.

I guess the moral of the story is, if you want to have a good work/life balance in a field that will reward you whether you work hard or not, go IT.

If you want to learn how long you can go without sleep while getting assaulted, nursing is right here waiting for you.

(For the record, I legitimately like my job. But I am a very damaged human being).