You're phrasing this as disagreeing with me but I don't see your anecdote as contradicting me at all. A lot of people would strongly prefer to make $400k rather than $150k, and not just college grads. Not everyone, and maybe not you, but many people. Are we actually disagreeing here?
I know plenty of developers 40+ who would never give up their lives in the burbs of Atlanta (where I lived until this year) to move to the west coast.
Even now, I’m almost sure that the new college grads who I work with (and one that I mentored as an intern) that came in after I did at an L4 will be promoted to an L6 long before I will (if I ever get promoted). I actually told my manager and my skip manager that I don’t want to be an L6 or the responsibilities it entails. I’m already saving/investing every penny of my RSUs. My base salary is about the same as it was before I left “enterprise development”. My fixed expenses are actually lower
