If you had it to do over again, would you chose to go into the area that you’re especially interested in and sacrifice ever getting the high FAANG comp?
Or do you feel that having that savings invested has given you the long term security to feel comfortable, but perhaps if you’d made ~80% less over your career you’d be less satisfied?
I think my path was probably a good one; it really is very psychologically nice to not worry at all about money and be able to advance my career in any direction I want now without feeling like I am being selfish, or neglecting my responsibilities as a father, or whatever.
I also certainly learned a lot at Amazon (although the thing I learned most was “how to be effective inside Amazon,” which isn’t a particularly great skill in the long run!). So it was not so bad.
Can you speak more to this? Why is being effective inside Amazon different from being effective at any other large organization?
But I also learned things like:
- How do I most effectively advocate for headcount within Amazon's yearly budget process?
- Who is the right person to go to in AWS Networking when we think we have a possible performance problem in the network stack?
- What is AWS AppSec really looking for when a design is going through a security review? (and what are they not looking for)
These have a little applicability, but mostly they're the inside knowledge that just comes from time and experience inside the organization. You learn the shibboleths that open doors or get people to listen to you on the first try. Sorta useful, but mostly not very interesting to me personally.
Now, I get $110,000 per year. That's plenty. I have a family, but my wife works too in tech and has a good income.
The marginal value of the extra income from working in big tech just wasn't worth it for me.