Overall I agree with you but... > In reality, that engineer doing all that cool stuff in the Bay Area in their shared studio apartment probably doesn’t have a

Overall I agree with you but... > In reality, that engineer doing all that cool stuff in the Bay Area in their shared studio apartment probably doesn’t have a better retirement plan than the community college sysadmin with a paid-off single family home in upstate New York. I don't think this is accurate, the net worth of the former is probably a multiple of the latter accounting for age.