I was surfing the web when I noticed that digg had a blog about “Highest paying jobs in the U.S." The blog seemed to be popular with 626 diggs which means people are definitely interested in the topic. According to the blogger, physicians and surgeons are on top of the pay scale by making an average of $147,000 a year. Software engineers, on the other hand, make measly average of $58,900 a year. In addition to that, the blog states that you can be a mere high school graduate to be a software engineer.

I could not even imagine where the blogger found his data. I first thought that it was “manufactured” data. But, as I always say:  “when in doubt, Google it.” I began searching and found that careerbuilder.com was responsible for the data.  Needless to say, Careerbuilder’s biggest competitor, Monster, doesn’t do a whole lot better when covering this same topic. Monster’s figures still do not come close to reality.

Let’s set the record straight. Neurosurgeons make on average $348,221 a year. That is just about double the amount reported by our blogger, careerbuilder and monster.  As a software engineer myself, I took offense to the statement that you only need a “high school degree” to become one. You can make it only as far as a simple developer/coder in small software shop, but never expect your career to advance more than that with a high school degree.  And on average, software engineers make $90,000/year.

The moral of the story is that sometimes you just can not trust data found online. If you must use some data in an article or a blog, do everyone a favor and analyze the data by relying on stronger sources before sharing it with the world.

Tags: blog-series, bloggers, Blogging, blogs, writing
Posted in Blogging, Miscellaneous