Better Than a Sports Star
A lot of people long to grow up to be professional athletes, from little kids to college stars. Pro athletes live what many think of as "dream lives," doing what they love and earning the big bucks. But, if you want a successful, high-paying career that has the potential to change the future, tech job website Paysa suggests that you forget your dreams of sports celebrity and become a software engineer instead.
Paysa released an infographic called "Becoming a Multimillionaire" over the weekend, and it details why becoming a software engineer is a much more stable and sure path to earning your first million.
For comparison, Paysa showed that the average career length of pro athletes in the NFL and the NBA is about 3.5 years and 4.8 years, respectively. During that time, an NFL star could earn around $3,010,000 at an annual average of $860,000. An NBA star, on the other hand, could earn an average of $12,027,456 with an annual salary that could go as high as $2.5 million.
However, software engineers are in a completely different ballgame.
The Future of Jobs
The average software engineer could earn up to $5,016,723 for a career that could last 40 years, with an annual salary of around $125,418. Plus, becoming a software engineer is typically more feasible than making it into a position on your favorite sports team. According to Paysa, engineering schools have a 63 percent acceptance rate. Of these, 60 percent graduate and actively seek work as engineers. 97 percent of these graduates end up with stable jobs.
Now, software engineering jobs can be as competitive as a professional football or basketball career. But, as we venture farther into a future full of artificially intelligent devices, self-driving vehicles, and daily automation, software engineers will become increasingly crucial. Software engineers use computer science, engineering, and mathematics to design, develop, and test software and computer systems that power all current technological advances.
As a software engineer, you would be capable of using your skill set to not only continue this technological progress but to concretely change the world. So much relies on technology, and so much can be accomplished through innovation, that with the right background, you could truly make a difference. And so not only would you, as a software engineer, have the relevant preparation and skills to influence society, you would also have the financial resources to do so.
Of course, there's nothing wrong becoming a professional athlete, it is just not the career for everyone. So, if you want to prepare for a profession that would be increasingly relevant in the coming years and might make you a millionaire, you might want to consider becoming a software engineer.
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