[andykmaguire]

Many (or most) of the great technology companies have technical founders that benefit tremendously from a successful exist. Equating "business guys" with "the man" who get all the benefit and engineers as the poor labor is misguided and ignores basic facts.

Every technology startup that blows up have people with engineering backgrounds in positions of senior management. Across levels of seniority, engineers often make as much or more money as their non-technical counterparts. If you want to stay at the individual contributor level as an engineer that is, of course, totally fine, but you should compare yourself to other IC's in the organization without technical skills. I think you will find yourself to be very well positioned financially.

[Touche]

Engineers who work for technology companies are in the extreme minority. The average engineer works for a non-technology company doing work that management views as an expense, not a revenue generator, coding up features that sales people who make twice as much as them promised to a client months ago.