When I quit my career as an engineer about a decade ago to begin as a training patent attorney, I took a pay cut of nearly 50%. It took about five years after qualifying before I was back to a comparable level. If I had stayed on my original career path, and moved into consulting or management, I would have a job that bored the living daylights out of me, but could possibly be earning twice what I am now. And that would be without any additional formal training or qualifications. No, I don't think patent attorneys are overpaid. Especially in view of the highly specialised combination of skills we bring to the role. But for those who are posting comments about how you get "no enjoyment" from your career, or are plagued by "self-doubt", this is not because of any inherent problem with the profession. It is because you are in the wrong career for you. If you seek happiness, rather than wealth, you need to bite the bullet and make a change. Mark

Many of the negative comments here serve only to prove the point which the post is trying to make in the first place. There are clearly people here who know how to code, and believe that this is a basic life skill, like reading or writing, which everybody should have, but who lack some pretty basic English comprehension skills themselves! Those who suggest that this post is elitist, or trying to exclude people, or telling people what they should or should not do, appear somehow to have interpreted the article to mean almost precisely the opposite of what it actually says. How does that happen? Yet these people can, apparently, code!