Agreed, last few years I have been working in semi-leadership position. At first, I thought I wanted to move to management but it wasn't exactly what I expected. However, my technical skills suffered. I tried to go back to a simple dev jobs but didn't get hired.

So the plan is build products but also focus on acqui-hire possibilities. If that fails, make sure my resume benefits from my projects. While I am already making pretty decent salary but if all those rumors about FAANG salaries are true, I can double my salary easily. So I can easily recover lost paychecks.

Well that's the idea, who knows how it will play out.

Where do such jobs exist?

I’d assume the parent comment is alluding to FAANG or some of the hotter software startups.

I'd be very surprised if most FAANG engineers aren't millionaires after 5-10 years. The caveat being that houses in the Bay Area cost a lot more than a million...

Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Facebook all have significant Seattle-area presence; it's still expensive, but noticeably less so than Silly Valley, and you can live close to work yet have a Walk Score in the double digits. (And in fact a good score.) MS has a non-negligible number of jobs in lower-cost areas of the US (e.g. Fargo, Las Colinas, Atlanta); Apple is expanding in Austin; both Apple and Google have an increasing number of offices in lower-cost cities.

One of my buddies who works at Google basically lives in a hacker commune so he can pocket most of his earnings post tax. Not sure quite what he does with it.

Sits in an account until the day that he gets suckered into marriage and home ownership

After that a messy divorce and funds are in lawyer and exwifey account and back to the commune

Commune will be 2beaucoup after a tech-salary divorce, only solution is evading the lifetime alimony police by sleeping in the desert, where your only friends are scorpions and your only food is the same ;)

MGTOW for life!

FAANG pays well, but not necessarily more challenging