Well don’t stop there with the analogy. Give me life changing income, public exposure to entice lucrative side hustles, a union with 49% of revenue to employees, and an off-season.
Levels.fyi says the average compensation is...450k. But that's for the entire software engineer job ladder, so it's probably skewed upwards somewhat. Still, a median of 250-350k would still be a ton of money.
For all the talk of "talent" in this industry, it doesn't work like a talent industry. Where engineers do earn major salaries, it's usually on account of the managerial element and not the engineering one.
Lawyering is a talent industry, for example. Top lawyers in top firms do earn on a scale as disparate as pro athletes. The top lawyers may manage people, but their high salaries are for lawyering. The creative industries work that way, obviously.
Engineering is structurally more like accounting.