@circuitrider rider - Of course they were not pulling down six figures. You seem to be confusing what I referenced as IT people with programmers or computer scientists. The firms I worked for would never hire the latter. The IT department was typically headed by someone with a Management Information Systems (MIS) background which may be described as a blend of management and a little bit of computer and network science. Those people probably pulled down six-figures, but were only found at the corporate level.
The local IT people either self-learned or attended technical schools. Think of people at the level of Best Buy’s Greek Squad. Their primary job was setting up new computers, maintaining a network, removing viruses from computers, etc. etc. One does not need a CS degree for that.
The best one started out as an admin, and learned how to setup and maintain networks and computers on her own. Whenever corporate IT culled the local workforce, local management would shift her to the administrative side. Whenever corporate IT’s changes failed, local management shifted her back into IT.