[closeparen]

For a lot of people in Silicon Valley, the sacrifice was working one's ass off in school to become a competitive candidate. The BigCo job is the reward.

Or for people in startups, the sacrifice is mediocre cash compensation and long hours, with the reward being a higher-than-usual probability of striking it rich.

Those of us who grow up with an affinity for software development have won the game, so to speak: we don't really have to sacrifice just to make a living.