If you want to make your millions, especially in the US, you’re better off becoming a software engineer than you are chasing dreams in the word of professional sports.
Being a pro certainly pays well, basketball star LeBron James made a tasty $77 million (£61.7 million) last year between pay and sponsorship, and Cristiano Ronaldo took home $88 million (£75.7 million). But those are just two individuals and, in a sector where only a handful of people out of thousands actually manage to make it big, the odds of success are slim. Factor in the short career lifespans and potential injuries, and suddenly being a pro athlete doesn’t seem so financially appealing.
No, instead you’re far better off ditching the sports and putting on your coding hat, suggests research from job site Paysa. Granted, it should come as no surprise that you can earn a lot of money by taking a stable job over something as competitive and unpredictable as a sports star or actor, but the monetary benefits of being involved in the tech industry are surprising.
According to Paysa’s research, the average acceptance rate at an engineering school is 63%, with 60% of all students graduating and 97% of those going on to find well-paying jobs. Once you’re earning some bread as a developer, your average career span is 40 years with an annual salary of $125,418 (£100,497). Not bad, all things considered.
When you start totalling up the potential lifetime earnings, you quickly start to see that you’ll be earning more than many of those involved in the lower levels of professional sports, and could easily go toe to toe with more notable sports stars. Of course, this relies on these athletes not going on to do other things once their professional careers are over – which is highly unlikely. But still, it proves that a career at Google (which can pay up to $10,674,690 – £8,552,561 – over a lifetime) is far from an unattractive proposition if you want to earn lots of money, even if you won’t be doing so in the public eye.
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