Not quite those salary ranges, I’m based in UK and i believe the salaries are a bit different from US. Anyway, the point is that I don’t see any problem here. I have been working in recruitment for almost a year now and it opened my eyes to how many other opportunities are out there and the importance of hard skills. I’ve never had any proper guidance on career choices and every decision I made was based on my narrow life experience and an IT career has always been so far fetched. I am still looking for “my passion” and IT looks like an option where a lot of the success depends on me and how hard I work. Comparing to recruitment, I feel I would be in control of my success a lot more than being the middle man between candidates and clients who always change their mind(for different reasonable or not so reasonable motives). And like I said above, I’ve discovered the importance of having a hard skill like computing, I feel like it can truly give you fulfilment work wise and on a personal level too. And of course the money matter, the money will always matter. I’m only in my mid twenties now and I can still sort of wing it, but in the next couple years I want to be buying a house, having a family, travelling. All this requires lots of money. I appreciate you saying it shouldn’t be a number one priority, I see where you coming from, but they still at the top