It's tempting to counter by citing the "lucrative" special case: The top 5-10% of T14 law schools who receive entry-level associate salaries of $160K/year base + bonus.
However, pricing power appears limited, creating a ceiling on wage increases. To this point, Vault100 firms have recently trickled out pay increases to $180K/year for incoming associates. Clients have laughed and said, "Good for your employees, but you're not passing those costs onto us!" [0]
lucrative is also a relative term, since they are often working 2000 billable hours a year (which, depending on type of work/attorney, may be 60% to 90% of actual hours worked per year)
In biglaw, i have friends who easily work 2500-3000 hours a year to make their billable hours requirement.
So these salaries are not exact as great as one would think anyway
I'm familiar with the sum($)/sum(hours) =< minimum wage arguments. We're also talking about the top 1% of 1% of wage earners in their age bracket. You might be able to get there via other means with better quality-of-life, but by all means -- absolute or relative -- $160K/year base + bonus is lucrative.
And $160k-$180k is first year salary, which is bumped up automatically until the seventh year, at which point the associate is making $280k-$315k salary. If they then make partner, they'll make much more.
I would argue, pretty strongly, many engineers do not work similar hours (or work at such "efficiency") in as stressful a way as the lawyers are working.
Of course, I don't argue doing such a thing is necessary or even useful to being a good engineer, just that i think you are giving pretty short shrift to the other side of this :)
Perhaps a lawyer's working hours tend to be more "efficient" or more stressful. My interaction has been primarily limited to in-house patent attorneys, and they don't seem to work appreciably harder or be more stressed out.
Work-related stress is a big issue. Regardless, putting in long hours at work, regardless of stress level, means less time for family, friends, hobbies, recreation, exercise, sleep, etc.
yes, but (and I'm biased), it seems plausible that a higher percentage of engineers enjoy a larger fraction of their work than law associates. I have no numbers to back this up, but very few people pick up corporate law as a hobby.
There is no way that $195k ($180k + $15k) is the top 1bps of wage earners at 26. That's pretty comparable to, if not less than, what you could expect in tech at that age. This is ignoring finance, small business owners, etc.
What planet do you live on? $195k is WAY above the average salary for a programmer. Only in SV or other super-hot markets will a 26 year old command a salary that high, and even then, only if they're amazing at their job. Most places, you're looking at $70-$100k.
Not that relevant to the argument, but you're right that the numbers are way off. For a 26-year-old, $200k is in the top 1%, but probably not in the top 0.1% (and definitely not top 0.01%). I don't know anything about tech salaries, but there are lots of 26-year-olds making that much in finance (total comp, not salary).
I think it is relevant because I would be willing to take a quality of life hit to be in the "top 1% of 1%" that I wouldn't take to make $200k. I make more than $200k, but I suspect that I'm nowhere close to the top 1 bps.
It's talking about someone in Indiana who is not making the kind of money that GP mentioned.
> Yet in financial terms, there is almost no way for Mr. Acosta to climb out of the crater he dug for himself in law school, when he borrowed over $200,000. The government will eventually forgive the loan — in 25 years — if he’s unable to repay it, as is likely on his small-town lawyer’s salary. But the Internal Revenue Service will probably treat the forgiven amount as income, leaving him what could easily be a $70,000 tax bill on the eve of retirement, and possibly much higher.
>There is no way that $195k ($180k + $15k) is the top 1bps of wage earners at 26. That's pretty comparable to, if not less than, what you could expect in tech at that age.
First you can not say a person works "in tech" any more like you can with Legal. The Information Technology industry has sooo many different Job Classification today that you can not longer loop everyone that "works in tech" together. Not even all programmers or administrators can be looped together anymore IMO. However there is 3 Basic area's of information technology that you might be able to Group together. Support, Administration, Development...
That said like the legal Field, Technology has also be decimated, H1B, "The Cloud", the rise of MSP model @ the expense of Internal IT and other issues are massively lowering the wages
So while a person @26 working for a Top Silicon Valley Company (apple, Amazon, Google, etc) as a High level Programmer, might get 195K, I do not believe you can say a person at 26 should "expect" to get 195K far far far far far from it.
If they are in Operations/Administration, you are looking at 40-70K nation wide, if you are in programming a little more, if you are In Repair or "HelpDesk" a little to much less..
Specialty Area's like DBA or Senior Linux Admin can command those high pay levels in select regions as well.
However, pricing power appears limited, creating a ceiling on wage increases. To this point, Vault100 firms have recently trickled out pay increases to $180K/year for incoming associates. Clients have laughed and said, "Good for your employees, but you're not passing those costs onto us!" [0]
[0] http://on.wsj.com/28LIgM6