The calculation of total lifetime earnings / career track is tough to make in advance. It's important to remember that the licensed professions (doctor, lawyer) have significant costs to enter. The advantages are that the fields change more slowly, cannot be done remotely, and are licensed. This allows you to more easily accumulate knowledge and experience over time, and prevents competition to some degree. Theoretically, that should lead to a stabler career, but a higher earning one is harder to be sure about.
I have a CS degree and used to be a decent programmer, but became a lawyer. To maximize my lifetime earnings, should I have simply moved to California and gone into tech eight years ago? Right now, things are doing well now in tech, and there are too many lawyers, but would that have meant I'd be completely out of a job at age 50 due to ageism/competition? That was my fear, and not an entirely irrational one, since these discussions keep coming up.
I have a CS degree and used to be a decent programmer, but became a lawyer. To maximize my lifetime earnings, should I have simply moved to California and gone into tech eight years ago? Right now, things are doing well now in tech, and there are too many lawyers, but would that have meant I'd be completely out of a job at age 50 due to ageism/competition? That was my fear, and not an entirely irrational one, since these discussions keep coming up.