I know you specifically said you don't have a degree, but never the less the comment section gives me mega flashbacks to what happened with MBAs around 2010/2013. Same pattern.... everyone had been pushing MBAs as the "good" career path, schools were pumping out grads, and then the music stopped. I watched friends who dropped $150k+ on top MBA programs struggle to land jobs that would let them pay off their loans. The career offices kept pushing the "average starting salary" stats but those numbers were getting propped up by a small number of graduates landing PE/consulting gigs while a much larger group was fighting for corporate roles paying half that. The MBA eventually found a new equilibrium but the "MBA golden age" was over. Starting to feel like we're watching the same movie with tech, the industry isn't dying but the days of "learn to code" being a pretty safe path to upper middle class might very well be ending. As with any concentration, the smartest MBA grads I knew were the ones who treated it as a tool to build actual skills rather than just a credential.
The same thing happened with law careers earlier. Everyone believed that becoming a lawyer was the golden ticket. Back in the early 2000s, law schools were packed with people pursuing that path.
Everyone highlighted the starting salaries of lawyers, but those figures applied mainly to outliers in BigLaw. Many graduates found themselves with $150k in debt, working $60k associate jobs in major cities. It can take a decade or more before you start earning the kind of money you were promised at graduation.
