Speaking as somebody very early in my career, the "having your pick of places to work" isn't that apt to me. Sure I could quit today and have a job next week do

Speaking as somebody very early in my career, the "having your pick of places to work" isn't that apt to me. Sure I could quit today and have a job next week doing development, however, I would for sure be worse off because while there is need for developers there companies that are doing awesome things already attract awesome developers, where the need seems to be the strongest is at companies that are doing boring work and paying shit wages. Also, what some see as "allergic to career advacement" could also be seen as long term career planning. For instance, I worked a terrible dev job for 7 months. I hated the place and they paid terrible salary for the skills they wanted and area they were. I quit after finding my current job. Now this is a nice place to work but there is still limitations to advancing as it is a smaller company. That being said, I'm planning to stick around for a few years because I'm working on my MS in CS and working on achieving my goal of working on compilers for a living. I don't need to hop to whatever job seems cooler than where I'm at currently because in the long run, it doesn't help me. Does it raise my income a bit? Sure, but after a certain point the money doesn't matter.