[rawtxapp]

Use your free time to build stuff, save the money to bootstrap and when your project gains traction, leave and build your own things so that you're not making someone else wealthy.

The brightest absolutely do spend their time and energy making others wealthy (ex: I would consider most senior eng at FAANG to be bright and although they are definitely rich, they are not wealthy). I suspect that's because of the cycle of responsibilities and spending most of their incomes.

[whateveracct]

The thing about FAANGs and BigCos is they have more money than they know how to spend. The majority of that headcount spend is just to capture "talent" so others don't have it.

I've seen millions of dollars-worth of software development waste as FAANG and BigCo. Nobody bats at eye. Because it's a bizarro world with no consequences. All you gotta do is not get wrapped up in it and collect checks ;)

[hinkley]

> The majority of that headcount spend is just to capture "talent" so others don't have it.

I think people on both sides forget this. You don’t need 300 engineers to solve very many problems, but if you use 300 it means 2 other companies don’t solve it too.

And just because you’re making a ton of money working for a big company, doesn’t mean that what you’re doing is that important. It might just be to humor you. Even at small places, sometimes the established players get thrown a bone, working on something frivolous because it makes them happy, so they stick around.

[beambot]

Or different people just have different value functions, and many of them don't care about "wealth maximization" when they're already comfortably in the 1%...

[rawtxapp]

For sure, everybody has different goals in life, but the thing is they are creating wealth, just not for themselves is all.