Engineering is one of a few special disciplines where peoples' hobbies align easily with ability to earn money at most levels of professional performance; being mediocre is still a recipe for a generally acceptable standard of life. Compare it to things like sports or acting or music. It's possible to make a living at the lower echelons (read: everything below elite level), but it's hard work or mundane and often not well compensated.
While I love programming and computer science that is one of the reasons I chose programming over other fields. I figure if you want to be a journalist you’re basically broke unless you’re one of the top few that are also making money writing books or doing podcasts. If you’re a historian you are basically not doing well unless you are one of the top and get a tenure track professor position. If you are a programmer, and aren’t even that good, you have a comfortable life in the us. The bottom 20% of software jobs are still in like the top 75% pay range.
