[flashgordon]

Reality is it is a tight tension between affording a job that is interesting (ie small teams, interesting work, low TC) vs patience for minutiae of politicking, dealing with sociopaths, working on bowels of legacy systems at a big co (with satisfying TC). Even at faangs (especially?) You are working 9999->9999.1 type projects. Even getting to an interesting project or team needs so much networking and branding clout. Now if your question is why do I need the TC - well I guess I made some wrong life choices in going for luxuries like getting a family, a home to live in etc :).

Btw I resonate with not having the patience for bs jobs. Thankfully I don't have ADHD (I think) but working on something I dont enjoy is such a struggle that I have to think of it is a checklist of chores i have to get through the day for the reward at the end - working on side projects in the night! Sad I know.