The career counselor at my college said, "there are no jobs programming, that's a bad field to get into" since it was after the dotcom bubble pop.
I was the lowest paid person in the company in both my first two coding jobs. Got into it for the love of the game.
I went coding when programmers were making sometimes even less than at mcdonalds
my first payroll was $100/mo and it considered a good wage back then
it was never about money for me, it was about challenges and its sad to see people claiming opposite