That may be the picture HN paints. In the real world, "SV code monkey" engineers earn in the very low 6-figures, maybe eventually breaking $200k/year total comp

That may be the picture HN paints. In the real world, "SV code monkey" engineers earn in the very low 6-figures, maybe eventually breaking $200k/year total compensation. Outside of FAANG, they're somewhat better compensated than elsewhere in the country. Within FAANG, most will burn out or plateau around the $250k - $350k total compensation mark. That's certainly affluent, and for the financially literate/careful enough to be "plain old wealthy" (high 6-figure/barely 7-figures after a decade or two). By comparison relatively few, even at FAANG, get to the worth I have unless they've been grinding at FAANG well into their 40s. It does happen, but it's not nearly as common as (perhaps) the picture HN paints implies. Besides that, one must be incredibly lucky to land a FAANG job. Every applicant knows they have to do the leetcode grind and be up on their highly scalable distributed systems design knowledge. There are hundreds of thousands of wanna be FAANG engineers. To be one chosen out of any given round of hiring is sheer luck. The hard work is also required--but it's no harder than any other applicant worked.