Being a high-end plumber doesn't take much college.
I joke, but most lawyers actually don't make a ton of money. Like programming, the profession is very bimodal. By the time you get out of law school, unless that law school is a big name like Harvard or you get a good clerkship or associate job, you will be heading for a career that tops out at $200k/year if you don't burn out in the mean time.
Plumbing, electrical work, and other trade work is weirdly lucrative and doesn't come with nearly as much "ladder climbing" as a legal career. Also, a mid-career trade worker can specialize (taking only very lucrative and weird jobs) or start to manage other tradespeople. Plumbing and the other trades are a lot like software engineering in that sense, and the reward for being the plumber who knows how to deal with water pumps in high-rises is similar to the reward for being the software engineer who can program GPUs (or some other niche skill). For example, I happen to have met one of the people who does the HVAC in Google NYC, and he makes the same amount as a senior SWE at Google.
In college, you will also be constantly surrounded by people making poor life decisions that look fun and being encouraged to join in. That also happens at most law firms, on Wall Street, and at many startups.
I joke, but most lawyers actually don't make a ton of money. Like programming, the profession is very bimodal. By the time you get out of law school, unless that law school is a big name like Harvard or you get a good clerkship or associate job, you will be heading for a career that tops out at $200k/year if you don't burn out in the mean time.
Plumbing, electrical work, and other trade work is weirdly lucrative and doesn't come with nearly as much "ladder climbing" as a legal career. Also, a mid-career trade worker can specialize (taking only very lucrative and weird jobs) or start to manage other tradespeople. Plumbing and the other trades are a lot like software engineering in that sense, and the reward for being the plumber who knows how to deal with water pumps in high-rises is similar to the reward for being the software engineer who can program GPUs (or some other niche skill). For example, I happen to have met one of the people who does the HVAC in Google NYC, and he makes the same amount as a senior SWE at Google.