A good life tactic used by and useful for most elite post graduate tech people I know is treating their careers as if they were sports stars. The big time earl

A good life tactic used by and useful for most elite post graduate tech people I know is treating their careers as if they were sports stars. The big time early years have massive rewards. One in a handful go on to be the team coach / manager. A few more graduate to coaching support staff at a much lower salary. A very lucky few land a job for life at ESPN or BBC Sport. Some don’t need the money. Some do. The majority move on though and retrain as gym coaches, teachers, parents, therapists, firefighters. They take a pay cut and a role with much lower global impact and a much higher local impact. Often because the latter is genuinely very rewarding. It’s something to look forward to as you get older but a drop in salary is going to be a fact of life unless you have exceptional transferable skills that put you at the top of the game in your chosen second career, be that in the private or public sector.