I agree with your gist here, but once upon a time I was drinking beer in SF with a guy who was among the first dozen or so engineers at YouTube. He was a multi

I agree with your gist here, but once upon a time I was drinking beer in SF with a guy who was among the first dozen or so engineers at YouTube. He was a multimillionaire because he happened to be doing more or less the same thing I had been doing at about the same time, getting paid about the same, not shouldering any particular risk -- but he happened to be doing it at a company that Google bought. That really made me think. While this might not be the case for the author here, I think in the startup scene (and thus for the HN audience) it's not all that uncommon for people to go from "very well paid engineer" to "FU Money" overnight and for reasons not related to their actual engineering prowess or effort.