I work at a large engineering firm. Even if you do get the big pay days it doesn't mean you can suddenly retire. You still have to put in a good 10-15 years to

I work at a large engineering firm. Even if you do get the big pay days it doesn't mean you can suddenly retire. You still have to put in a good 10-15 years to get reliable financial independence. I say that in the light of that I'd much rather be working on personal projects or projects which deal in resource efficiency/conservation/telemetry, but these gigs don't pay as well.