No one's getting promoted every 2 years from L3 to L8. Even going from L3 to L5 in 4 years is rare. Plus, most people who try to walk this path will plateau at

No one's getting promoted every 2 years from L3 to L8. Even going from L3 to L5 in 4 years is rare. Plus, most people who try to walk this path will plateau at L5 anyway. That's still not bad, though. Graduate at 22, having banked a decent bit of savings already from 2 or 3 Big Tech internships. Make L5 by 26, coast for 5-10 years, and then call it a wrap. Invest in real estate as soon as humanly possible during that time, and scale out the real estate portfolio at the same time as the brokerage account and the 401k. If I were to do it again, that'd surely be the fastest way to go. Then again, if I were to actually do it all again, I'd love to do it all entirely differently. Maybe become a carpenter or something.