| > Play this forward ten years with a family to support and a mortgage which committed you to personal inflation and a track record of ...? Being an excellent employee? I understand your point, but I actually have been doing this for about 10 years now, and I consistently have improved my "career trajectory" by switching jobs when I start to feel that my coworkers are overachieving and throwing me under the bus. I look at it like a forcing function to switch jobs and get a raise. I already had a decade of pre-work experience just from being a lifelong hacker, so it's not like I'm relying on my job to learn new technology. I don't have a fear of falling behind. If anything, I've noticed a huge decrease in SWE competence over my time in industry. Some of my most "successful" friends at FAANGs are bad developers that just devote more time to playing the system than I am willing to do. I find the social con-man stuff to be really draining and I hate doing it. I also hate interviewing, which limited my career more than I'd care to admit. Also, I've opted to not support a family or carry a mortgage. I'm doing something similar to FIRE. I'm hoping to be FI with a total of 15 years as a tech employee. "But do you really hate working so much that you would sacrifice having children!?". Yes. Very yes. It's also likely that tech workers are "overpaid" right now, as we're compartmentalizing more work, lowering the skills required to join tech companies, and remote work is now the norm. It's a race to the bottom, and I want out as soon as possible. |