just as a counter point, and using a throwaway because I don't want to leak net worth stuff. I'm in a flyover state (started in SoCal, not remote). Not a FAANG.

just as a counter point, and using a throwaway because I don't want to leak net worth stuff. I'm in a flyover state (started in SoCal, not remote). Not a FAANG. Base salary is 200k and I have about $200k per year in RSU, not to mention the IPO that gave me about $1M. I'm a distributed systems developer working on multi-tenant systems for hundreds of thousands of paying customers doing multiple billions of calls from customers that multiplex into larger internal load on our DCs. I've grown with a company from a couple dozen employees to thousands. Through IPOs and acquisitions (from both sides). This gives me some more perspective on working in different sized orgs with long time scales and a deep understanding of operations and maintaining software while switching out legacy code for new code (the proverbial changing out wings on a plane in flight). I'm sure there is not a big supply of folks like me anywhere, and most of us are probably doing work at FAANGs and such. Truth is, FAANGs can't afford me because I'm not jumping ship for anything less than full time remote with good people on a product I think is worthwhile for anything under $600k/yr. I'd actually like to start something around edtech, so maybe I'll look into that if I lose my golden gig.