Salaries have been relatively stagnant for most software developers since the late 1990’s boom. Kids straight out of school were then getting 80–100k to start in mid market cities like Atlanta and Raleigh/Durham where you could buy a nice house for $160k. Many Silicon Valley salaries were in the mid 100k range and you could buy a home for 400-500k.

Many other jobs, on the other hand, have seen significant boosts in salary and many business careers have much higher top end potential than software development careers. My main point is that I disagree with the general opinion that software development is a slam dunk for people starting new careers.

I am encouraging my children to focus on their reading, writing and language skills over tech skills for their future, as they can always easily get into tech with the multitude of high level languages and mostly CRUD / web development that dominates the industry now. True CS skills are rarely needed.