I call it a “gravity problem”. I might not like or completely understand gravity. But it makes no sense to complain about it. I’m not going to jump out of a window on the 30th floor.

If you want to make $150K+ straight out of college and $259K+ a year three years into your career, you play the game. If you don’t want to play the game, accept the reduced amount of money from staying in enterprise dev.

At 51, I would rather get a daily anal probe with a cactus than deal with any lathe company especially BigTech again and I’m definitely not going to chase after a job where I have to work in an office. But I know what I’ve been giving up for the last 2+ years by ignoring recruiters from GCP’s internal consulting division based on my stances.

But again, I’m also 51, I’ve done the build the big house in the burbs thing twice and I have grown (step)children that I’ve raised since they were 9 and 14 who don’t live with us