Says the lawyer who has never built anything (lawyers don't make as much as they used to because supply from the Foggy Bottom Law Schools of the world exceed demand). The $300k he is paid a year is probably 2% or less of the cost of the construction he oversees. If done well, the company makes millions. If done poorly, the company can lose millions. He's paid what he is to make sure tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in engineered projects come in under budget. If Shell loses money on his projects, he gets canned (of course he might be out of work right now anyhow with oil still under $40). My wife and I both went to state schools and do fine (of course we both graduated with honors and she was top 5 in her dental school class and had residency offers from Harvard but elected to go to a state school instead). My wife and I with our state school degrees out earn my brothers with their advanced degrees from Vanderbilt, MIT and Notre Dame, but we also took some big risks in starting her business, building her building, etc. We make a lot of money, but we have taken out over a million dollars in loans over the years (all of which we paid off). Heck, I made more money than I make in a typical year in the past few months by buying a bunch of stock when everyone else was losing their minds.
I have always had a job [same professional job for 21 of the past 22 years (I took a 1 year "sabbatical" with another company)] because I have always made my employer money and my compensation has grown as I have taken on more responsibility. Young guys make less because they are generally responsible for less money (if they make a mistake it will cost a company thousands, if the big guys make a mistake, it will cost millions).If a person wants to make a lot of money, they either have to be responsible for large sums of money or have to take a lot of measured risks.