I wrote a program which did months of coding in hours.

Is this juvenile? https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/ud3vhp/pro...

A bit of this helps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3hAnAnJwyU

Found startup, get acquihired in a year for $10M. There's risk involved, but there are certainly people who have managed to do this.

There's a number of other ways of varying risk/time/shadiness tradeoffs. Start VC fund, have $1B exit, cash out $70M carry in 7 years. Start hedge fund, raise $300M, earn 12% returns for 7 years, cash out $70M carry on $360M profits. Find a DeFi exploit, hack Ethereum, earn $300M in a 10 seconds, hope the Feds don't catch you. Lever up on real estate, put 3.5% down on 100 $300K properties, turn $1M into $20M as they've gone up to $500K over the past year.

The worst case when you fail to get promoted is still making salary at the current levels.

The worst case when you fail at a start up is years of lost time, money and health. And starting way behind others, should you(now that you are out of money, wouldn't you?) start a a job again.

The term mediocre is loosely used there, pretty much every one who starts a company fails, and thereby ends up being mediocre compared to a person working a job.

Salaried jobs have a better path to financial success than a start up, for nearly all the people.