| I haven't heard of someone being a VP of Engineering after just 5 years of SE and 65k after taxes after 10 years sounds a little low. I think the main problem is that a few companies have very challenging technical work and are happy to pay really high salaries (think OpenAI specialists, a few teams at Google / Netflix pushing the boundaries forward), the rest need relatively trivial solutions and they will pay higher than average (think most people working at FANGs on stuff they're overqualified for) or average / lower than average (think most startups, small companies). After a while, you won't grow technically in most companies and you won't advance the state of technology. Some people just keep contributing the same stuff over and over until they die (1), some people specialise in some technically obscure niches and charge a premium for that (2), some people decide to become people managers (3) and eventually become CTO. It doesn't seem like you're happy with (1), you already did (3), I would say you have too much people experience to go back and do (2). A master's degree in something you like won't be particularly useful at your level, it could be an expensive gift to yourself. If I were you I would just start my own business: you are technical, you are a manager; the next skill to learn could be business. Other options include looking for a CTO role in an early stage startup, or doing the interview-algorithm-memorisation-game to join a FANG.
Early stage startups and FANGs will likely not be very nice places to be in terms of politics though, so you may not be as happy as you're now. Best of luck |