This is true not only for software or engineers. 10K is still significant but you definitely need to set your own bar. Anyone in the 50K to 150K wage market n

This is true not only for software or engineers. 10K is still significant but you definitely need to set your own bar. Anyone in the 50K to 150K wage market needs to have a deep understanding of whatever it took to bring in 10K without your employer, it's going to take a lot more of that once you no longer have a paycheck from a job there. Even building success selling used cars on the side can be very worthwhile to engineers who are considering becoming entrepreneurs, when it could be regarded as a career distraction on many other engineering paths. And however long it took you to bring in the 10K, it's likely to require 5x to 15x as much time to match your employment income, when left to your own devices. A lot of times when you get far above 150K in wages, any windfall can be based less on productivity and more as temptation so you don't start your own company when you think about it. At that point you'd really need to independently be able to make a lot more than 10K a lot easier & quicker before it would make sense. Might have to sell something at a lot bigger scale than a few cars then.