By cultural I meant American. Just to be clear I am not American.
I'm not quite sure what your point is. You seem to be supporting what I'm saying which is you can get by perfectly well with various choices. You made choices (poor or not) to not go after the biggest paying jobs and you're doing great. Why does a new grad today have to go work for Google?
In the US there are lots of really good paying software jobs that aren't with the biggest tech companies. I've worked remotely for a small US startup many years ago and got paid really well. The current market is tight but over the last decade if you had a pulse and could code you could get pretty decent job.
I can make different choices at 49, after having a 25 year career, a house that doubled in value in four years that I could leverage, no family responsibilities, parents that have been retired for 20 years who still have four sources of income (2 pensions and social security) that are healthy and independent at 80 that don’t need me (for now).
I also had no college debt (scholarships and going to a cheap school) and I was able to get into BigTech by being old, with industry experience that allowed me to bypass the leetcode grind. But only by pivoting into consulting.
These are life choices I could make that a new college grad couldn’t. Also when I graduated, $BigTech wasn’t a thing. Apple was barely hanging on for dear life and MS wasn’t paying more than your average company adjusted for cost of living.
I'm not quite sure what your point is. You seem to be supporting what I'm saying which is you can get by perfectly well with various choices. You made choices (poor or not) to not go after the biggest paying jobs and you're doing great. Why does a new grad today have to go work for Google?
In the US there are lots of really good paying software jobs that aren't with the biggest tech companies. I've worked remotely for a small US startup many years ago and got paid really well. The current market is tight but over the last decade if you had a pulse and could code you could get pretty decent job.