This is working as an employee at a single US company (I live in Canada). It was total compensation (salary, bonus, annual stock grants). I grew from 1/3 of t

This is working as an employee at a single US company (I live in Canada). It was total compensation (salary, bonus, annual stock grants). I grew from 1/3 of this 13 years ago though I changed employers several times. Eventually the small raises / bonuses / stock grants kept piling up. During this period for about 2 years I was an independent contractor and was at around $250k annually (could be higher, but you don’t get paid for vacation, conferences or marketing/sales efforts). Building a small lifestyle business is another pathway to making a lot of money, though it too tends to take a few years. I have friends that have built niche industry software apps that gives them about $1m-2m a year. Enough to hire staff to keep things running.