Re: chartered accountant salary…
It may be higher. Partners in a CA firm can make 250k + Bonus. I suspect people who are in business for themselves would likely report a low salary compared to the revenue their business makes (e.g. wife gets a ‘salary’, both get dividends, and other money stays in the business). In Canada, this is how doctor’s do it, and I presume CAs can do something similar.
I am a Software Architect. My brother is a CA. From a Canadian perspective:
In terms of career prospects, ability to work for yourself, and yes, salary…CA is better. Don’t think they have CA’s in the USA (they have CPAs). There’s also big changes in Canada (we no longer have CA’s either, now we too have CPAs). I don’t know what that means for the profession, but the classical CA was lucrative if you managed your career properly.
Software Engineering is not a service job. You can’t simultaneously service many clients and charge them hundreds to thousands per sign off. Even if you are a consultant, you’re typically doing one gig at a time. The closest are probably those in software consulting, on the business side. They take a cut out of the pay of the developers who work for them and they contracted out…but that’s not at all a technical job. You constantly have to bid for contracts.
Doctor, lawyer, accountant…if they manage the business aspects of their career right, you’re not going to match their earning potential as an SE. They all have the benefit of their clients being compelled to return for more service. For example, the independently practicing accountants can look forward to tax season…
If you intend to be a 9-5 worker and not a sole proprietor or get involved in a partnership, you’re going to want to move from manager to partner within a certain period of time (say, a decade or 15 years…don’t really know for sure). If you can’t, you’re career is pretty much done in a firm. I realize that the same could be said of SE’s…i.e., if they put in enough effort and take the right risks, they could be the next Jobs, Gates, or Zuckerberg. But compared to accountants, it’s perhaps very rare for SEs to go that route…in Canada, at least, CAs working out of big firms and for themselves is not uncommon.
IMHO, the unambitious - those who don’t want to hustle, and maintain client relationships, they should be SEs. We get well compensated for sitting in a corner mulling interesting problems. We’re smarter, but we don’t make as much. 