I've more or less followed this advice, and it's worked out for me. For the most part, I used my salary to pay for expenses and stock compensation to build up wealth.
The tricky part is that a lot of this advice is situation-dependent. Should you switch to a riskier company that offers a higher compensation? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Should you work late to accomplish goals hoping to get a promotion? It depends.
So how are we supposed to know what to do?
The answer, in my opinion, is people. You have to trust people who are trustworthy and avoid people who are not. As an employee, your success depends on the people who hired you--they are the ones who can promote you or cheat you. The best leaders are the ones who realize that helping you advance is going to help them advance. Help your boss accomplish their corporate goals and they will promote you--not as a reward, but as a bet that you will help them on the next goal.
Bad leaders are either too selfish (fail to promote you) or too incompetent (unable to rise, even with your help). You need to learn to avoid them.
Therefore, my advice is this: Look at the leaders in your company--people who could plausibly hire you. Which ones are the best bets? Which ones have both the talent and the integrity to succeed? If you're lucky there's more than one and you can work to get on their team. If you're unlucky, there are none and you need to find a different company.
I know two engineers who worked their way to becoming centi-millionaires. One worked for the same company his entire life. Another looked at every job as feeding a 'system' of a) co-workers; b) clients; c) the economy.
Probably the single best take-away from the article is to never stop learning. I also like the tip about keep networking and building relationships.
It requires relatively no effort just discipline for anyone to save money and live within their means. yet, most don’t most always have an excuse. Within the design and engineering department that I worked in more than half of the people did not save always had an excuse even before they were married and had kids.
Just setting aside 25% over time adds up to a sizable amount.
I've got to admit, the most difficult part of saving money is that first you need to be able to comfortably afford your basic expenses, in particular, housing.
but I think there is a crowd that rejects too many of the basics at their own detriment. yes, getting work, highly valued work, still helps and helps waaay more reliably for a broader population than other methods, but its just a step. So you still need to do that, You also need to parlay earnings into wealth producing assets, assets that also have their own independent value that is intended to grow.
> There is a popular idea that substantial wealth belongs mainly to entrepreneurs.
This is probably because 24yo college dropouts are achieving billion dollar valuations after 12 months of work. Their secondary sales are worth more than following all the advice in this article will be for your entire life.
(To say nothing of NVDA, SpaceX, or other big tech acquiring them and making their billions liquid, despite no moat or profitability, just because they have so much money and need to spend it on something.)
No matter how much “grit” you have, you’re still at the mercy of such people, as e.g. the engineers at Windsurf were, who worked super hard but their founders sold to Google, walked away with hundreds of millions, and gave the employees nothing.
Of course, it depends on your meaning of “substantial”. Successful engineers have great wealth too, enough that they can be very happy and buy anything they want. But pretending the two levels are comparable is silly.
I've more or less followed this advice, and it's worked out for me. For the most part, I used my salary to pay for expenses and stock compensation to build up wealth.
The tricky part is that a lot of this advice is situation-dependent. Should you switch to a riskier company that offers a higher compensation? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Should you work late to accomplish goals hoping to get a promotion? It depends.
So how are we supposed to know what to do?
The answer, in my opinion, is people. You have to trust people who are trustworthy and avoid people who are not. As an employee, your success depends on the people who hired you--they are the ones who can promote you or cheat you. The best leaders are the ones who realize that helping you advance is going to help them advance. Help your boss accomplish their corporate goals and they will promote you--not as a reward, but as a bet that you will help them on the next goal.
Bad leaders are either too selfish (fail to promote you) or too incompetent (unable to rise, even with your help). You need to learn to avoid them.
Therefore, my advice is this: Look at the leaders in your company--people who could plausibly hire you. Which ones are the best bets? Which ones have both the talent and the integrity to succeed? If you're lucky there's more than one and you can work to get on their team. If you're unlucky, there are none and you need to find a different company.
I’m going to go against most of the comments here (negative) and say that there are a ton of wise nuggets in this article.
Specifically pieces about how to be valuable in a pragmatic and honest way.
I've come across co-workers who make +$250K in salary who live paycheck-to-paycheck...
1. Alimony
2. Child support
Alimony alimony paying your bills.. when your conscience hits you knock it back with pills
I know two engineers who worked their way to becoming centi-millionaires. One worked for the same company his entire life. Another looked at every job as feeding a 'system' of a) co-workers; b) clients; c) the economy.
Probably the single best take-away from the article is to never stop learning. I also like the tip about keep networking and building relationships.
Yeah right.
A lot of words to say “save money”. Remove the wealth aspect from this and it’s a good article for people early in their career though
Woah, you can't do that. It only requires only no effort to save money when you have tech salaries.
It requires relatively no effort just discipline for anyone to save money and live within their means. yet, most don’t most always have an excuse. Within the design and engineering department that I worked in more than half of the people did not save always had an excuse even before they were married and had kids.
Just setting aside 25% over time adds up to a sizable amount.
I've got to admit, the most difficult part of saving money is that first you need to be able to comfortably afford your basic expenses, in particular, housing.
psyop, nobody is falling for it
but I think there is a crowd that rejects too many of the basics at their own detriment. yes, getting work, highly valued work, still helps and helps waaay more reliably for a broader population than other methods, but its just a step. So you still need to do that, You also need to parlay earnings into wealth producing assets, assets that also have their own independent value that is intended to grow.
What an insulting article.
> There is a popular idea that substantial wealth belongs mainly to entrepreneurs.
This is probably because 24yo college dropouts are achieving billion dollar valuations after 12 months of work. Their secondary sales are worth more than following all the advice in this article will be for your entire life.
(To say nothing of NVDA, SpaceX, or other big tech acquiring them and making their billions liquid, despite no moat or profitability, just because they have so much money and need to spend it on something.)
No matter how much “grit” you have, you’re still at the mercy of such people, as e.g. the engineers at Windsurf were, who worked super hard but their founders sold to Google, walked away with hundreds of millions, and gave the employees nothing.
Of course, it depends on your meaning of “substantial”. Successful engineers have great wealth too, enough that they can be very happy and buy anything they want. But pretending the two levels are comparable is silly.