The $775,000 Job That Isn’t in STEM
Everyone wants their kid to be successful.
And somewhere along the line, “successful” became code for:
Major in Computer Science, maybe Finance. Make six figures out the gate. Retire early.
But that math is outdated. According to a recent Yahoo Finance article, one of the highest-paying jobs in tech right now is prompt engineering, a field built on words, not code.
Some “storyteller” roles pay up to $775,000 a year to people who know how to write well, ask sharp questions, and shape how humans talk to machines.
That’s not a fluke. That’s a wake-up call.
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Math and science aren’t the only smart investments.
You want ROI on the years of activities, tutoring, and college tuition. That means a path that leads to comfort, stability, and financial success.
STEM is assumed to be a safe bet. Stable job, solid salary, clear path.
But the numbers don't say that anymore.
Recent data on new grads shows that real twenty-somethings with technical degrees cannot land work. Computer science majors currently have an unemployment rate of about 6.1%, and computer engineering majors are closer to 7.5%.
To make it even spicier, those unemployment numbers look a lot less like “safe bet” and a lot more like the fields parents love to trash. Computer engineering grads are currently more likely to be unemployed than art history majors, who sit at roughly 3% unemployment. Computer science grads have higher unemployment than philosophy majors, who are closer to 3.2%.
So when someone at school or a family friend sneers at the humanities kid while glorifying the tech kid, they are not reflecting current reality. They are quoting a story that was true ten years ago and has not kept pace with AI, hiring freezes, and tech contraction.
On top of that, tech hiring itself has been brutal. In 2024 alone, U.S. tech companies laid off around 95,000 workers, after cutting about 191,000 the year before. Entry-level hiring at big-name tech firms fell by roughly 25% from 2023 to 2024, which means the exact kids you think are “safest” are often the ones stuck in the longest job hunt.
Even when STEM grads do land something, a huge chunk are underemployed or outside their field. One analysis found that over half of American STEM graduates are underemployed or not working in STEM at all.
Your overachiever who majors in CS or data science is probably not going to be destitute. I am not anti-STEM, but:
The idea that “CS = guaranteed job, humanities = barista” is just lazy.
The real money? The real career moats?
They’re showing up in unexpected places:
- Journalism grads who pivot to AI training data curation
- Psych majors working in UX research at Meta
- Linguists leading brand voice development at startups
- Theater kids designing immersive content for AR/VR
- Philosophy students crushing law school, negotiation, and ethics in tech
These aren’t exceptions. These are the new norms for people who follow their talent and understand how the market is shifting.
AI is replacing the easy stuff: Code, spreadsheets, even marketing copy. But it sucks at reading the room, closing a deal, designing for emotion, writing with wit, making judgment calls, understanding nuance, and sometimes, making mulah!
These skills don’t live in a programming language. They live in the humanities. The arts. The “less practical” majors that parents side-eye at dinner.
Why force your kid into a crowded, AI-exposed lane they do not love, while the student who leans into communication, strategy, design, or psychology quietly builds the skill set that the new market is paying top dollar for?
Success doesn’t come from picking the most “employable” major.
I’ve worked with hundreds of high-achieving students: robotics kids, pre-med kids, kids running nonprofits in their free time. Some of them are truly built for STEM. They light up solving equations. They can think in 4D.
But others? They’re verbal assassins. They’re observant, emotionally sharp, and creative under pressure. They can make a room feel something. Too often, they’re told to be quiet. To pick something “real.” To not risk it.
I’m here to tell you: that’s the actual risk.
You don’t get ahead by being generic in a field the world’s already overproducing. You get ahead by being excellent at something other people overlooked.
It comes from becoming so good that they can’t ignore you.
Sometimes that’s CS. Sometimes it’s anthropology.
Sometimes it’s film, law, architecture, education, design, or writing.
What matters is: Are they great at it? Can they evolve with the field? Are they building something real, rare, and sharp?
That’s what Top Dog students do.
We don’t train them to play it safe.
We train them to be undeniable.
Because in the real world? That’s who wins.
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