Not quite. Actors and musicians have it better, once they've established themselves.
I'm not being facetious here - with people trying to "break in" to programming and endless auditions in the form of whiteboard interviews, I can't help but feel like we've ended up in a career with most of the downsides and few of the upsides of an entertainment career.
Not quite. Actors and musicians have it better,
once they've established themselves.
It's more like a freak statistical accident -- like "being born into a royal family", getting hit by a meteor, or winning millions in the lottery.
citation needed
> once they've established themselves.
BIG if; the ones you're thinking of represent the 1% or less. Survivorship bias.
I only recently learned about the term "strawman argument", and I think this is one. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Parents post was not about SW devs who established themselves, but about SW devs in general. That you don't need to establish yourself to still live a good life is exactly one of the advantages of being a SW dev.
Besides that: Establishing yourself as actor often involves attending partys of Harvey Weinstein kind of people.
So here maybe more "survivorship bias": the bias of looking only at the top performers / the most visible ones, or here "those who made it". Ex: "Interviewer: How did you get to your position? Politician: I worked hard! I spend countless hours doing XXX etc...". Many other persons might have worked just as hard or even harder, but lacked the connection or simply the luck to make it.