Look at the likes of Dave Plummer or pre-Fog Creek Joel Spolsky for real world examples. Neither were particularly early, not particularly senior, started on bo

Look at the likes of Dave Plummer or pre-Fog Creek Joel Spolsky for real world examples. Neither were particularly early, not particularly senior, started on bottom rungs, both of their Microsoft tenures basically amounted to a solid career as a developer and both seem to have made out well from it.