[yashap]

Verrrrrry few people earn 3-4 million in the corporate world by 37. Depending on whether you get an undergrad or a masters, that’s ~12-15 years of work. That means you’d have to AVERAGE 200K-333K per year, over your first 12-15 years, to hot that. That’s really, really rare - considering you’d be starting at a much lower salary, you’d have to be at ~$500K by your mid 30s.

Founding startup(s) is really, really hard, but people do it because it’s a chance to get fuck-you money by your 30s/40s. The corporate world rarely offers that, most have to work until 60-65 before they can afford a decent retirement.

[ptrenko]

Read this analysis: https://www.myroadtofire.com/blog/how-engineers-can-fire-in-...

You have to be an L5 engineer at Google. And I know a guy earning $700k per year at 32-33 in ARM. Plus other VPs. Depends on your vantage point, but starting a startup is way harder. Personal experience here.

[yashap]

That analysis is for a software developer, in the Bay Area, going straight to Google out of undergrad. That’s already the exceptional case.

The author of this post is non-technical, and from Austria, this path was not an option. Or speaking from my experience, as a software developer in Canada, starting salaries out of school at your average Canadian tech company are ~$60-70K CAD, and as a senior developer you’re looking at ~$100-150K CAD. Even getting to $200K (CAD, not USD) by 37 would be rare for a Canadian software developer.

Your comment was “Honestly corporate salaries will earn you 3-4 million by the time you are 37 or so”, as if that’s easy/normal. It isn’t, it’s exceptional and rare.

For a tiny fraction of the world, earning $3-4 mil by 37 in the corporate world is a possibility, but for the vast, VAST majority, like well over 99% of the world, it isn’t, at all. Globally, the annual salary to be in the top 1% of earners is ~$32K USD. In America, it’s ~$420K USD, but that’s made up largely of C-suite executives and business owners who are well above 37 years old.

Most startup founders are deciding between “work in the corporate world until I’m 60-65, or try founding a startup.” Based on that, some still give startup founding a shot, even though they know it’s going to be super hard and will likely fail.

[_yj7v]

I'll tell you another reason why people underestimate difficulty of startups.

The probabilities are completely uncertain. You just never know how big it can get or how likely it is.

If you are optimistic like I was, you "hope for the best" since that one guy did it right? In essence, you don't know how hard the problem is.

In the corporate world you do know the probabilities, so you get scared by it.

TL;DR: Once you know the true probabilities you'll know which is a better option

[yashap]

I’m certainly not arguing that founding a startup is a good choice, financially or otherwise. It’s super hard and you’ll likely go bust while making very little money. Just arguing against making it seem like it’s at all easy or common to earn $3-4 mil by the age of 37 in the corporate world - it really isn’t. That’s an exceptional outcome. To do that you basically need to become an insanely young executive, or to land a job as a dev at a place like Google/FB straight out of undergrad, which is also rare.

For example, this is the typical salary range for a Senior Software Engineer in Vancouver (in CAD): https://www.payscale.com/research/CA/Job=Senior_Software_Eng...

“Big 5” salaries in SF/Seattle are way, way above what you’ll make almost anywhere else. Lots of startups are founded outside the Bay Area/Seattle, where these types of salaries don’t really exist.

[ptrenko]

I know so many people who have Google/FB jobs straight out of college. It depends on your perspective, but its not rare.

I assume anyone who wants to startup is atleast a top 5% engineer. Otherwise its just a bad punt. You have to be terribly good to be in the startup biz