On a related note, you've nailed a big problem I have with encouraging women to go into IT. How I can I enthusiastically recommend this field for women when I have reservations about recommending it to anyone? The reasons I'd be hesitant to encourage my daughter to go into IT are largely the same reasons I'd be hesitant to encourage it for my son And the remaining reasons specific only to a woman may be present in every field, perhaps to a greater extent.

People compare nursing to software development, and by national numbers, yes, software pays more. But out here in San Francisco, ground zero for the "shortage" of software engineers (so grave that apparently it imperils the entire US economy and national security), an application developer, until very recently (like, last couple of years, according to BLS stats), earned less than a registered nurse. Here are the latest numbers.

Software developer (San Francisco): ~147k/yr
https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-develope...

Registered nurse (San Francisco): ~140k/yr
https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/registered-nurse/...

The data is a bit hard to parse, because here are specialties of programmer and nurse that pay more, and less, than these numbers (nurse anesthetist, for example, earn much more). There are variable pay issues to consider - tech workers may have options, but then again, nurses who work for government or university hospitals often have very good pension packages (the kind that were once commonplace but are now extinct in the private sector). And UCSF fired a bunch of IT workers after telling them to train their H1B replacements, try that on the nurse's union (seriously, see what happens). I think that things like maternity leave are probably better in nursing as well.

In any case, while it isn't clear that nursing is necessarily a better field, it is absolutely not clear, in any way, that it's a worse choice from a financial and career/job stability.

Tech goes through this on a pretty regular cycle. The CEOs ask the market what it costs to get talented people who would like to do something meaningful with their life what kind of salary they'd need to agree to work on photo sharing apps in a giant open office in a place where a crappy 2 br house runs well above a million. It turns out people with options kinda prefer other options, like, say becoming a nurse practitioner. The market answers, the CEOs don't like it, so they have the government ask again on their behalf. The government responds by granting these CEOs and their HR departments control over a shadow immigration system, where they get to decide who does and doesn't get to live in the uS and the conditions under which they are allowed to remain here. Those conditions, it turns out often involve being a developer in the valley - because that's what the country needs, right?

Meanwhile, the people with the right to choose a career path consistent with their interests, life ambitions, and financial needs (what we call the "free folk", those who either inherited citizenship at birth, have a relative here, purchased it through various investments, or earned it through 7-10 years of employment at a tech company that sponsors and controls their green card application) often decide that they'd rather do something else. I'm hardly going to discourage someone with free choice from choosing an different option, especially when so many of those other options provide meaningful and fulfilling work at reasonable salaries (and don't involve tech interview tests or open offices).