[throwawaymath]

The creativity coming out in this thread in order to sidestep the spirit of OP's question is remarkable. First we had comments talking about reframing the problem as one of cost of living, now the top comment is recommending working two jobs concurrently as a remote employee...what the hell.

OP clearly meant $250k at a single company. It would be nice if we didn't respond to that request by trying to interpret it as some sort of shitty X-Y problem like StackExchange. OP is (probably) an adult. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt that they don't need a weird lecture about how they're leaving money on the table and should abuse remote employement in response.

On a more practical note, there are two problems with your recommendation. First and foremost, many (most?) companies have an employment agreement forbidding freelancing or full time work with another company. Intellectual property gets very tricky if an employee is working for a company with a substantially similar product or market. If you're found out, you'd likely be fired.

Second, you're asking us to check our assumptions but your assumptions are frankly ridiculous. "Low performing teams in low performing organizations rarely require 4 hours of effort per day"?! How are you quantifying this? It's not just about net hours, it's also about contiguous time. What if you have consistently conflicting meetings? Your plan is to be someone sufficiently capable to excel at two jobs simultaneously with 40 hours or fewer per week, but this is a more sane option than reaching $250k at one company? Really?

[vbtemp]

Thank you!

The question was simply what steps should one take (in tech) to become valuable enough to earn a highly-substantial premium in earnings -- to cross the next threshold so to speak -- using approx $250K as a benchmark.

Responses about changing lifestyle, location, or ponderings on the meaning of wealth in our modern age are simply not responses to the question posed.