Is that really true? This article [1] lists a top 10% petrochemical engineer's salary as $146,000. A fairly skilled senior software engineer at, say, Google can easily pull in $250-300K in total comp, and a programmer on Wall Street or independent consultant with good domain knowledge in wealthy industries like banking can pull in $300-500K/year. That's not even counting talent acquisitions, which can go for $1M/engineer/year.

[1] http://work.chron.com/salary-petrochemical-engineer-4334.htm...

yeah but those wallst and google jobs are not top 10%.. probably closer to top .5%

Actually, it was petrochemical company, one of the largest. And no, petrochemical industry doesn't pay much more than software profession.

Comparing with my friends who are still doing ChE jobs, If I was still in petrochemical, I most probably be getting paid little less than what I am being paid now, but working much more harder, longer and more stressed.

@Nostrademons

Ok clearly I am out of touch then. But seriously, how many SE really gets paid 250k+, even at Google? Quants is in my mind the same as the petrochemical industry tough, rediculous salaries so that one I can believe.

Ones with about ~10 years good industry experience, or with several years of good Google experience+equity.