I love my work and want to continue writing code and managing software projects. I would simply like enough money to always be able to work on whatever project

I love my work and want to continue writing code and managing software projects. I would simply like enough money to always be able to work on whatever project I want without worrying about money. I think for many that is the origin of the obsession with money in the tech community. I know plenty of rich people and none of them are "retired" in the traditional sense. They instead have more freedom to pursue projects and more resources to change the world. So I think many of us simply want to escape the rat race. I think another cause is that the length of the career of a software engineer is shorter than any other engineer. The reason being that a civil engineer from the 70s can still do the same job today. Software and the tech used in it changes so profoundly over a short period that the amount of continuing learning required is immense. To reduce that stress, it would be great to have a large financial nestegg. Finally, because we work in an industry based on exponential change and disruption, there is more ability to actually get rich. It would be delusional/useless to focus on getting rich as a public high school teacher, but actually feasible for a software engineer.