Salary suffered because of my reluctance to even compete for those jobs. The article talks about how to gain Financial Independence as a software engineer. Cho

Salary suffered because of my reluctance to even compete for those jobs. The article talks about how to gain Financial Independence as a software engineer. Choosing to not work at FANG or unicorn co's, will severely limit your ability to achieve FI. Whether you like it or not, people do make judgements off of where you went to school. I've had several managers at FANG talk about how they have a bias towards top 10 schools, one even admitted that the candidates don't seem that different but he still has this bias. The biggest boost in your career earnings came from working at (1) financial companies and (2) working at FAANG. I don't think you have enough data to say that your area of focus is what to lead to this, and I personally think it is wrong. You're welcome to look at the data on levels.fyi It's pretty clear that at this point SWE's on average far-out earn HWE's. Not to mention the fact that there are a lot more open headcount for SWE's than for HWE's at the top-paying companies.