But you can have a "real career" without ending in management. In the Bay Area you can make absurd amounts of money as individual contributor. Not C-level of ab

But you can have a "real career" without ending in management. In the Bay Area you can make absurd amounts of money as individual contributor. Not C-level of absurd, but high enough to be fine with earning less but enjoying your work more—money is only a means to an end, after all. Also, the only way I'd be interested in going into upper management would be as technical co-founder, which requires neither grinding levels nor job-hopping. Overall I think you're being a bit too reductive about what a "real career" means.