That future is already here. Starting salaries for attorneys at top-tier firms are higher than starting salaries for engineers at top tier tech companies, but not by much, around 10%. Once you factor in the 3 extra years it takes to get a law degree and tuition costs, it's fair to say that attorneys are paid less than engineers.
While attorney compensation at top firms grows pretty quickly every year (5 years out of school, you can hit 300k with bonus), very few attorneys last this long (average attrition is 3 years), and again, this is only the very top tier. Also, generally attorneys work far longer hours than engineers and have a much more stressful work environment.
At 40, a good lawyer is making partner and starting to enjoy a share of his or her firm's profits. I'm still sitting in an open office working on Jira tasks without any idea of how my company is doing because engineers are completely isolated from the financial books, even at smaller firms. I am learning yet another JS framework, and not able to network or learn anything related to the business. I'm glorified 'IT'.
The lawyer is wearing $1500 suits, flying business class to meet with clients and other attorneys, has an office and an expense account. I'm relegated to JIRA monkey tasks, and on another death march on Friday evening fixing bugs and eating "free pizza and snacks" our scrum master bought us for working another weekend.
At 45, the lawyer is now making more and more money, and respected more as he's now an experienced attorney, and can assume he will probably continue his upward path for the next 15 years
At 45, I just got replaced by some 25 year olds on H1Bs, and after doing well on several interviews but receiving no callbacks after the in-person, am researching Just For Men™ to get rid of the gray in my hair. I'll find it harder and harder to find jobs as I'm told I'm "not a great fit" for most teams, and will spend increasingly longer time periods completely unemployed, burning through savings. The jobs I do eventually get, will pay less than I earned at age 30.
At 60, the lawyer, now full partner, owns a large chunk of his firm in equity, and can work what he wants. He's made enough to take it easy, or can put in more hours and keep pushing up his salary.
I've pretty much given up as half the corporate jobs in my city were offshored or using H1Bs, and the rest are only hiring cheaper 20 somethings as there is now not much demand since the bubble just popped (again) like it did when I was 30, 40 ,and 50. At this point, I just pray I can make it to 65 and Medicare before getting really sick, and that my 401K will last me until I can take early social security at 63.
You're comparing approximately the best possible outcome for a lawyer (makes partner at a high paying firm) with a mediocre-bad outcome for an engineer.
Most of the bills I get are in the region of ~£500 and for that I get a 5-10 page legal document or in depth review of some semi-complex legal matter which took them a day and then some several hours back and forth of revisions - all included in that price.
Visiting their offices is far from glamorous - most are literally piled high with document boxes (a dozen easily) and their desks the same. None of them wear Rolexes or fancy suits. I certainly don't get the impression that they're making bank - just that they're doing okay, same as your average software engineer or white collar job.
The office juniors in these small legal firms do commensurately less well than that...
Now there are big city firms which doubtless do very well and where partners do better than your average lawyer - but then outliers like that are the same in any industry.
I don't live in the US, for the usual disclaimer.
I'm 35 and I can already feel this happening. There just isn't much of a career path if you don't go into management or own a business. Maybe at the huge companies (Apple, FB, etc), but not most, and definitely not in most geographies.
What I don't understand is why it's different in tech vs. other fields. Maybe because they're professionalized and can't be cut out? Whereas tech is more capitalistic overall and reinvents itself every 5-10 years in a way most other professions couldn't imagine? Not sure.
"Free pizza and snacks" does feel pretty infantilizing. Heading into my late 30s, I'm not game for that anymore. It's not even just the money, it's the overall approach to work, the open-plan offices, having little autonomy, little networking or visibility into the business, routinely having my judgment overruled by the latest VC-backed 22-year-old, dealing with stupid and avoidable tech debt, death marches, and cleaning up others' messes. After three failed startups, it's gotten tiresome to the point that I've decided not to work in those companies anymore, and really given a hard think to my personal career plans. Even as the executives of these bankrupt businesses have all failed upward into senior director roles at larger companies and sama and co. continue to preach the gospel of fast wealth and career growth at the latest darling run by "geniuses" 3 months out of YC.
You point to two pretty important reason why lawyers continue doing what they do, and why the career path remains attractive compared to engineering, even if lawyers ultimately earn less.
1 - In general, as a lawyer, your perceived value goes up over time (gray hairs are money-makers). Whereas, in general, as an engineer, your perceived values goes down over time.
2 - A lawyer has a sense power. The legal field requires them to be independent (they are beholden to their clients, but not anyone else) and also knowledgeable on how to navigate (or manipulate) the system of rules that society has put in place. This provides some sense of power and agency. Today, even though many engineers probably "know" more about how individuals or society is manipulated, they generally work for major companies, and even those that do not don't have the incentives to properly bring such injustices to light.
If engineers were somehow incentived (i.e., make money) from outing perceived technical injustices, I suspect they would quickly eclipse lawyers in both compensation and stature.
And from what I've seen, even in smaller cities, decent lawyers who 'make it' by mid 30s usually find a niche, and start gaining more respect, book of clients, and just generally are immune to the ageism and short careers in tech.
And exactly like you said, it isn't even about the money so much anymore as I do okay. It's that we're completely isolated from anything related to business, and that really screws us as we don't get any insight in what the numbers really are (or how much I'm billing my own customers as a consultant), how to increase sales or contracts, strategy, networking, etc.
At 40 years old, if development jobs dried up, I'd have no clue how to go out on my own because all I know is 10 different MVC and JS frameworks.
At I'm really getting worried because I do see that there are so few engineers over the age of 50. Where do they all go, since I know many can't or won't get into management?
I wrote that about two years ago. There are many parallels between how attorneys and software people work which I think you recognize.
One I've brought up several times already in this discussion is that where one chooses to work -- not just how well one interviews, how hard one negotiates, etc., has a big bearing on pay. And there are many reasons why someone might choose to work in a non-FAANG (parallel: BigLaw) setting. Maybe they want to live somewhere else, they enjoy a more specialized boutique area of work, they want more lifestyle flexibility, etc. Larger point, us devs could learn a lot looking at how attorneys or other professions think through these tradeoffs.
Funny, I was talking to my wife earlier tonight about what we should aspire to. Is making as much money as possible really the goal? How much income is it worth to have a short commute and less stress? With a kid on the way in 2-3 months, I find my thoughts coming to this stuff rather often.
