Where do you live that garbage collectors make as much as programmers?
https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=Waste%20Collector&l=Austin%2C%...
That was one of the first results, but it seems like the average is generally lower, around $15 an hour. My first tech job was as a Linux sysadmin in a web hosting company in Houston circa 2011, which paid 17 an hour.
This was with no formal education or experience (I'd played around with Linux at home and wanted to work with it professionally). So I'd say the claim that garbage collectors make the same as programmers appears to be generally untrue.