Besides going into software instead of academia, I haven't tried to maximize my earning power in any way, and I'm pretty well off. I own a median house with two kids who have a stay at home mom, and we never have to worry about money. I'm minimizing the consequences of not maximizing money because based on my experience and a cursory look at the stats, I don't think the are any for a software developer in the US. The median household income in the US is ~74k. BLS estimates the median software development job pays $132k, so almost 2x median household. The 10th percentile still pays more than median household. Someone who can pass a known-difficult interview like Google's should also have an easier time than average finding a job.

So if you aim to have financial security with a median lifestyle, or even better (e.g. single income), that's easy to do in software. Chasing maximum money is a choice. It seems pretty out of touch when looking at any other job to use "well they need to pay the bills" to excuse behavior in this field.