A decent example from my own career (if we're going with the "debt as short-term gain, long-term loss" metaphor): I spent 3 years at a DoD consulting firm for m

A decent example from my own career (if we're going with the "debt as short-term gain, long-term loss" metaphor): I spent 3 years at a DoD consulting firm for my second job. The pros: - Boost in pay ($40k -> $85k a year) - Boost in my credibility and resume (I had no STEM degree) - More professional development resources (I was able to do a master's while working and got to witness a lot of engineering in-the-large) The cons (at least in my mind, since I can't be sure what I would have done elsewhere): - A lot of the stuff I did there is unmarketable. No one is writing new code in Perl. And static analysis, while technically very interesting, is not a ginormous market. - I feel "behind" in the world of cloud computing since I didn't do much of it while I was there. Most of my next steps look like places that demand a lot of skill building big systems in the cloud. I'm doing it a lot right now but I feel like my team and I are learning a lot of lessons the hard way. - If I had succeeded in moonshotting my way into a top tier tech company earlier, I would have earned enough capital to take advantage of a couple critical periods (cheaper housing, various opportunities in the stock market, etc)