Not sure. All the people I know that make a living off of art, musicians, sound designers, illustrators, film makers, fashion designers, etc. have one thing in common: a 10+ year grind of barely scraping by, working ridiculous hours and multiple jobs before getting in a somewhat comfortable spot.

There is just not much demand for certain jobs while it is a dream of many many people. As an average software engineer you'll still easily make an above median salary somewhere. But from what I've seen, as an artist, if you are not in the top few percent, not in terms of skill but perseverance, networking and self-marketing, you'll starve.

But I assume you knew that before you went to college, right? Not trying to be a jerk here, just trying to gauge what peoples’ expectations are.

I didn't really have a frame of reference for what was realistic or enough to get by with. 40k sounds like a lot when your high school job paid 150 a week. I thought 100k a year was rich. I didn't realize until the end of college music would only ever be a hobby for me unless I wanted to sacrifice everything else in my life

Peoples priorities change over time. And young people don't really understand how much the low status and grueling grind they are getting into sucks.

And then you are 28, already in debt, having wasted a decade without a decent career to fall back on.

Also, people tend to expect positive outcomes for themselves. "It is going to be hard..." yeah, sure gramps. But I'm different.

Sure you heard and read about it, but I don't think at that age you fully realize of just how hard it is and how long 10 years can be.

Personally, I didn't study anything related but was in music semi-professionally (more on the production side) for about 5 years until I decided to just keep it as a hobby. In my case, I realized that in the end, I'm just not passionate enough about it to keep accepting the trade-offs. The ones that made it are. Deeply so, and they don't regret anything. Nobody wishes they had picked another career path.

Overnight success takes 10 years... this is basically true for all jobs.

But for some jobs the road to it is more comfortable than others.

Architecture is a trip in that regard, at least in my experience. Gruelling hyper-competitive school*, high tuition, and terrible job prospects.

* Anecdotally, I’ve never seen a group of students more willing to undermine each other than the architecture students where I took university. Because of the “accept many then weed the lowest XX%” approach it seemed like they were always trying to tear each other down. I’m sure it’s not like that everywhere, but I saw this firsthand at one school and heard secondhand for another.

Architecture also has an additional risk factor in that it is somewhat market dependent. You might graduate when construction is hot and firms are hiring, or it might be a downturn and no one is hiring. It's a roll of the dice unfortunately.

>they were always trying to tear each other down

Or demolish each other, you could say.

I grew up wanting to be an architect, so I became a software engineer. Theres less red tape and more funding in the ether.

If you do UI, its essentially the abstraction of the architect profession.

Looking forward to an immersive vr web where I can start really building out digital built environments.