So many things I have to disagree with. Not all software engineering is easy, particularly the highly paid variety. The six figure salary is diluted by spending weekends constantly having to learn new technology off the clock. Companies then expect senior engineers to mentor other engineers and give presentations of their technical challenges, debasing the value of the knowledge gained working off the clock. Manual labor jobs don’t typically require the student loans software engineers have to pay off, further offsetting the salary gains by years. Manual labor workers get to go home and be done at the end of the day and aren’t tacitly expected to be available at all hours. It may not be the worst industry but it definitely is not a fun industry to work in at a lot of companies. It has one of the worst interview cultures on earth probably and the more years I work the more I see the obvious flaws to the point where I want to leave.