Well said. This, and its excellent followup below should be read and taken on board by junior devs, since it doesn't seem to be common knowledge. It's like th

Well said. This, and its excellent followup below should be read and taken on board by junior devs, since it doesn't seem to be common knowledge. It's like there's this Big Pot of Gold sitting there up for grabs in the Bay Area. But whenever anybody mentions it, all these people come out of the woodwork to explain how that Pot of Gold is only in the Bay Area. Out here in Scott's Bluff Nebraska they only have this little bucket of rocks. And that's all perfectly true. But our commenter then goes on to explain how we should all forget about that Pot of Gold and instead focus on how to get a few of those rocks, because that's all any of us are ever going to get. No. That's not the takeaway you should have. If there's a Big Pot of Gold someplace waiting to be taken, your job should be to find a way to get some of that gold. Yes, it won't happen immediately. You'll need to work on it. Maybe it'll take 5 years. Maybe 10. Maybe you'll need to actually go to the Bay Area for a few years at some point. But know that if you really want it, it absolutely is possible to achieve. Google alone hires 10,000 engineers every year. Not all of them were born in Palo Alto and graduated top 1% from Stanford. There are dozens if not hundreds of companies who are hiring remote devs at Bay Area compensation packages. Just because you're a no-experience kid in Nebraska today doesn't mean you need to still be one 10 years from now. Please. For your own sake. Get going.