I think possibly you are lacking imagination :) There are many career paths, some very lucrative, and it's not just the awful "be a sharepoint consultant" BS.

I think possibly you are lacking imagination :) There are many career paths, some very lucrative, and it's not just the awful "be a sharepoint consultant" BS. For starters, if you look at Glassdoor, an engineer with experience can get a job w/ a wealthy tech company making $175k+/yr, with your base salary at $130k+. And it goes up from there. This essentially matches my own experience hiring in this market and talking to others that hire. And if you hold some of that $45k+/yr RSU grant, you are likely to see appreciation. There is a lot of misconception. Just last night I was at a popular pizza place in a popular SF neighborhood and beside me sat a table full of guys, mid 20s or so. One guy said, basically, "companies aren't paying more than the low 100s for engineers" and everybody seemed to agree with that. My first instinct is, let me make you a job offer! The truth is, there is a lot of money to be made in tech. People always focus on early stage, lotto-ticket equity. It's easy to overlook that there are MANY publicly traded (or pre-ipo) companies that are hiring engineers, paying handsome base salaries and generous RSU grants. All that said, it's not all about the money. I don't mean to suggest it is.