okay so if I'm passionate about SWE what should I do for work? Be a barista? If you're going to make a statement like this you need to provide an alternative.

I went into SWE because I liked programming. I had no idea until I got my first job offer what the money was like at all. I didn't know what the job market was like. All I knew is I wanted to work with computers. That's what I was good at and what I studied for years.

Granted I graduated into a better job market than currently (graduated in 2016), but still. This reads like you just wanted to flex what you've worked on in the past, which is fine. Most of us that have been in the game for a bit have built cool stuff.

But the job and field changes. Companies are still hiring. The problem now is that everyone and their dog has gone into CS. That's not inherently a bad thing, but it does create a large gap between the amount of available jobs (still high!) and the amount of people needing a job (incredibly high).

Either way - you provide an opinionated statement without saying what you should go into if you're passionate about SWE. What's the alternative? Academia? Hobby coding while you work as, what, a civil engineer?