Definitely, my prioritized as mentioned in my post; lied with my well-being, and not just getting a pay raise, otherwise I would've stayed. It could be argued t

Definitely, my prioritized as mentioned in my post; lied with my well-being, and not just getting a pay raise, otherwise I would've stayed. It could be argued that I could get a raise somewhere else, and I also have gotten that, but not the amount I would've gotten if I stayed. I am still quite early in my career, and I am already in the upper bounds of what I can make as an employee given the length of my career (99th percentile). And when finding a new job, even when I've gotten recommendations been difficult for them to even match my old salary, simply because I haven't been out of university that long, but command a much higher salary than normal. Would you as a product owner / manager hire an engineer that has been out of university for two years with a bachelors, given that person says he wants a senior/lead engineer salary? Honestly, from my experience even when I've gotten recommendations, talked about previous projects, they still don't want to shell out what I cost. The plan is definitely to keep pursuing new experiences and at some point either begin consulting or start a startup. But for now I want to experience a few different companies. I also want a few projects under my belt before I begin doing that. That said I am already in the 99th percentile in my country given my length of career, so I have nothing to complain about, but I am definitely gonna keep pushing. And honestly right now my priority is not making the big bucks, I could pursue that, but I'd much rather work on awesome projects than slave away at some legacy code for the maximum amount of money.