Average nationwide computer engineering salary is $88,000:
Computer Engineer Salary | Indeed.com
And granted I'm all about my online business, etc... But in case that really never kicks off (who knows) I have contingencies in place. That means getting a nice job in a big city earning 6 figures and investing 90% of my money into a solid investment portfolio. I'm gonna end up rich one way or another.
Starting your own business you can earn an uncapped amount of money. If you're intelligent enough to get one of the big 6-figure jobs in the city, then you should be able to run your own business making vastly more than that. Lots of people think that a job gives them security though, which is just an illusion.
Starting your own business(es) is the only way to truly secure financial security for the foreseeable future. Just keep doing it, failing, and trying again until you're successful. Once you have a few million in the bank, you have your security. Working a standard job you're never going to reach such levels without a vast amount more luck.
Good reasons to go to college are basically for the life experience, getting drunk and meeting tons of people who'll be potentially good business contacts in the future. Studies showing college grads are more successful are inherently biased, so far as intelligent people tend to get degrees, so it stands that you'd expect them to do better in life.
Computer Science / Computer Engineering is at least a degree where you'll be learning things practical for the working environment though. If you're a comp sci guy who's amazing at what he does,
and have social/solid business skills too you're pretty invaluable as a company asset, because so few exist.
I don't know why anyone'd want to work for a faceless city corporation anyway, I'd far rather go into a v. early stage start-up (which doesn't require a degree in 99% of cases anyway - you can differentiate on other levels), grab some equity, a salary I can live off and try to change the world, even if chances are statistically it will fail. It's far more exciting, and potentially builds your career much faster. As a start-up director, if the company grows fast you have to learn tons of skills very quickly, they can't replace you because you control so many "vital" aspects of the company, and the delay in hiring someone else would cause too much disruption. That means you grow into an advanced role rather than having to lick someone's ass in a graduate programme for several years to be promoted to the next position, and eventually some kind of VP.
Not to mention being a developer in a big corp is the most frustrating thing ever. Enjoy spending a year working on a development project, for the entire project to be scrapped and your work made effectively useless. Most lines of code written for huge corporate projects go to waste. Either scrapped out or replaced before they even go live.
, just got a $10,000 per semester scholarship + other smaller ones to a local university.
. Eventually I know it'll work out but I've gotta have a backup in my pocket.