What I find distressing in your account is not the 130K, which is a good amount of money, but the fact tat you are working 60 or 70 hours a week. Anyone with y

What I find distressing in your account is not the 130K, which is a good amount of money, but the fact tat you are working 60 or 70 hours a week. Anyone with your experience should have no problem whatsoever getting a job that pays the same, if not more, and doesn't ask you to work those extra 20 or 30 hours. That's a lot more leisure during the week, which might make you a lot happier. Not only that, but it gives you the time and energy to aim higher in pay. Definitely do this first. It's true that you can more and also not work so many hours, but the secret there is not a masters degree, but the right contacts. A hidden secret in US software is that we have a hidden class system: Different employers that pay very differently from each other, and also tend to only hire from the same class. You can join the 'top' class early by going to the right school, and using that school to do a couple of the correct internships. That makes your resume register in the HR departments of the right companies. Once you start your career in a place that pays less though, the one way upwards is networking. So how do you network? Attend (and speak) at user groups attended by people that work in companies that pay better. Speak in conferences. Write blogs. You have an extra 20 hours a week that before you were using to getting zero extra money to dedicate to this! Building an online presence in 20 hours a week is not difficult. At some point, someone from a company that pays better will see your value, and you'll get recruited upward. Repeat a few times, and you work for 300K. If you have the presence, but fail at making the big contacts, there's also consulting. There's a lot of low pay consultants right out of school, but some of the very best paid people in the industry are experts at something, and also make 300k+. I know this because I am also an immigrant who started making about 50K at a place that had a lot of weak programmers and a few underpaid jewels, and some of us did a long climb to the top together: It took a lot of work, but now I am making great money working on a good product, surrounded by those MIT and Stanford graduates that just had a very easy road just for going to the right school. The road isn't easy, but it's possible as long as you really have the time to dedicate to it. And that's why you really have to quit that job that takes 60+ hours a week.