Yup.
"With no credentials I was able to work hard on my own for a year and then landed an entry level position with very good future prospects."
What other lucrative professional industry is this easy to break into?
"With no credentials I was able to work hard on my own for a year and then landed an entry level position with very good future prospects."
What other lucrative professional industry is this easy to break into?
It's only easy if you're an autodidact and have high-level English proficiency. In reality it's easy for the people it's easy for, but 95% of the population is still excluded.
Programming as a skill will be completely commoditized in the next ten years. But some developers will still make good salaries, because as the world gets more interconnected the value of being a winner in a winner-take-all market is only increasing.
US avg salary software developer: $99,500
A welder who graduated from Tulsa Welding School with a year or so of training is likely going to start out somewhere around $50k. I have a friend who went there and specialized in underwater welding, and now he works for BP in the Gulf somewhere. His job consists of mostly inspecting the work of his juniors, and he makes about three times what I make as a software engineer.
> ...and he makes about three times what I make as a software engineer.
Hazard pay is coming into play here. For me, that's not worth it.
It's more dangerous than sitting at a desk, but realistically it's not as dangerous as it sounds.