[verst]

I don't mind. When I look at the vast majority of software engineering jobs out there even Microsoft compensation is good, and perfectly fine for Seattle.

I used to work at Google too (in Mountain View). Believe it or not I liked working at Google and I also like working at Microsoft.

I don't need to chase top tier compensation. I just do things I enjoy where I'm learning and my career can progress. Right now I'm mostly writing in Go working on an OSS project managed by the Cloud Native Compute Foundation.

As an aside, early retirement is not a goal of mine.

[dastbe]

to be clear i don't think you should mind if comp-maximization isn't your sole focus now (or ever).