Technology careers

Tech remains the best-paying industry on earth for people without a licensing moat, and that’s exactly its weakness. Nothing legally stops a million new entrants, so the floor is crowded while the ceiling keeps rising.

What pays: proximity to the model layer. AI/ML engineers, infrastructure and platform engineers, and security specialists command the biggest premiums: senior AI roles at US frontier labs clear $500k+ total comp, and even ordinary senior engineers at large US companies sit at $200k–$350k with stock. Sales engineering and technical product roles quietly match engineering pay with less competition.

What doesn’t: the entry level. Junior web development, manual QA, and generic IT support have been squeezed hard since 2023. AI tooling raised the bar for what a junior must offer, and bootcamp-grade skills stopped clearing it. Median junior offers in the US have been roughly flat for three years while senior pay kept climbing.

Direction of travel: the gap between commodity coders and system-level engineers is widening, not closing. Geography still matters less than employer: a remote engineer in Poland or Portugal on a US payroll out-earns most local executives. The play in tech is no longer “learn to code.” It’s get close to revenue, get close to AI, or get senior fast.