I suppose that depends on what you categorise as 'high reward'.

I basically mess around writing software—something I like doing—for 6 hours a day, attend a few meetings, and every month somebody deposits a ludicrous amount of money into my bank account. And I'm not even working for one of the larger companies with correspondingly better salaries.

I'm certainly not going to become a cash millionaire off the back of it, but I'd wager that in aggregate the amount of investment one makes into a stable job at a large software company pays out more on average.

Just clicking on your profile I see you work in London. From what I can tell most programmers don't get paid 'ludicrous amounts' there. Though maybe you have a rare role, or maybe you just have a very low threshold for what you consider ludicrous.

You are correct about the tech industry here (low salaries relative to US) but developers working in finance in London make comparable money to Bay Area tech firms.

People routinely get paid £100k straight out of university to write code in London, just not in the tech scene. Total comp in the financial sector with 5 years experience is commonly £200k.

Which is not 'ludicrous' but more than you might imagine from seeing £40k job postings in the web dev sector.

That is so no true in my experience as someone working in finance in London. Can you name 1-2 companies paying 100k for graduates or 200k after 5 years?

That's not true as such. £100k with no experience is very hard to achieve, even with long-term comp. Maybe if you work at an algo trading company and get paid by the performance of your algorithms. But then it's more like being self-employed (they just provide seed money and some basic salary).

Total comp of £200k/year is clearly possible but also just on the investment side (not writing software for support systems) and usually involves some risk (i.e. income is volatile). Finance easily pays 2x that of tech in London but only because tech doesn't pay very well. A lot of startups pay programmers not more than you'd get with any other office job which is clearly not comparable with the US.

I’m extremely skeptical of your estimates; they’re considerably higher than I’ve heard of in London.

Damn, I've made some bad decisions in this career!

What a load of bollocks! £90k in finance with deep technical expertise is already in the 99% quantile for London.

Not true.

"I'm certainly not going to become a cash millionaire"

don't be so sure. invest 10-20% wisely and you may be one sooner than you think ;)

I completely agree.

My point is opportunity cost. Unless you have a very clear idea of what you want to do/build--which many people do--you're better off with a day job.

I see a lot of people essentially rage-quitting (let's be serious, that's what happened here) and then wasting years of their life working bottom-of-the-barrel contracting/crappy startup jobs because they "don't like big companies". I made this mistake and it's cost me enormously in money, time, and career development.

Same here. At some point I was disillusioned with the idea of working in a corporate because I thought I was just "selling my soul out for golden handcuffs" (doesn't help to watch some Mr. Robot, Fight Club, etc.), but in reality I was just a junior dev who didn't fit much into social hierarchies. I tossed away a good 2.5 years at two startup jobs, one that I co-founded and died slowly (even though I had already read Lean Startup et al...), before slowly realizing I just wasn't making any meaningful amount of money nor progressing in my career because I didn't have a senior/mentor/best practices guiding me. Now I'm back at the cubicle but realizing there was so much I missed out on that wasn't obvious to my younger naive self before.

What sorts of things did you miss out on? Is starting a company still a valid option if you have a senior/mentor and are familiar with best practices? How do you get those things so that you are successful?

>I see a lot of people essentially rage-quitting (let's be serious, that's what happened here) and then wasting years of their life working bottom-of-the-barrel contracting/crappy startup jobs because they "don't like big companies"

That's basically what I am doing for exactly those reasons. But I don't think my jobs are crappy.

I traded stupid amount of money for more freedom to choose what I work on. I don't want to be a monkey on a keyboard nor do I want to put with the bureaucracy of a big corporation.

Or am I getting it terribly wrong? My brief view of a large organization terrified me and I don't want to work in such a place. Are big places really that much better if I am basically paid the same amount of money?

Working for yourself is no guarantee of higher rewards but it does have the possibility for higher rewards. The key is to focus on opportunities that have the highest potential outcome. I like to think about business opportunities as something that can generate FU money in 10 years or less. If it doesn't meet that level, you might be better off on the slow and steady upper-end corporate gig.

A lot of software engineers fail to realize that at a corporate gig you get to focus on being a programmer. Once you move out on your own, you also take on the job of sales, accounting, HR, etc. Your next step is hiring people to handle those jobs but that moves you from writing software to being a manager. Running a business is a different set of skills from software engineering so be prepared to learn something new.