To put it in finance terms, EV and ROI in banking is much higher than coding imho. (Matching banking comp at middle of bell curve, you have to go to the right t

To put it in finance terms, EV and ROI in banking is much higher than coding imho. (Matching banking comp at middle of bell curve, you have to go to the right tail of tech curve). Tech however has better EV in autonomy and intrinsic motivation (for me, very subjective I know) and much higher optionality in comp in the long run. The typical example is a guy who codes for fun and don't mind taking a below market comp for a few years but is smart to choose to join a pre-IPO unicorn startup and make his comp on the backend. (150K for 3 years there a million dollar payday via employee options). My personal example is after leaving a high frequency trading firm, I worked on automated market neutral option trading on my own retail account as a side hustle and built it up enough where my trading income exceeds my W-2 income consistently. But don't think you should go for it if money is a primary motivation, if so the money payoff from the optionality if it comes, you won't be able to wait for during the years of theta bleed.