[nsagent]

You left off an important caveat from the next sentence:

> But of course I have been very lucky, there.

You do have to be lucky enough to be relatively secure in life, but nearly everyone in tech can achieve an adequate living. Not everyone will be a top earner and there are of course compromises you have to make, but should actually consider if the trade-offs for potentially earning less yet being more fulfilled at work are ones they are happy with.

In some sense I'm the starving artist in my family. I eschewed money and moving up the tech management hierarchy to pursue my passion. In pursuit of my goals, I've previously been unemployed and in recent years paid 10x less than I was in big tech.

I'm totally happy with that trade-off.