Intern/Freelancer: ~80k p/ year --> Engineer/Consultant: ~150k p/year --> CTO/CEO: ~250k p/year --> post-acquisition or (better yet) profitable founder: $500k-$10M+ p/year.
Sample sizes get smaller and smaller as you go up the scale. To be fair, you're no longer "programmer", but "attorney" can mean so many things at this point, it's almost more like saying "working in tech industry".
Yes, that's my point. To travel your "software engineer track," you need to stop being a software engineer and climb the management ladder or become an entrepreneur to get the big salary bump.
> but "attorney" can mean so many things at this point
I don't know what you mean by this. I referred to attorneys at law firms, who can make $250k+/year for life as attorneys. Or doctors in well-paid specialties, who can typically and reliably make $350k+/year for life as doctors.
What's more, in these fields a person's perceived value actually increases with time and experience, whereas a software engineer's perceived value more resembles that of a linebacker.