Sure, in general, and I'm not saying that this is a bad deal for everyone. But I bet your parents managed to have a real life in that time. There's something to be said for that.
I wouldn't do it for two reasons. First, it would be working at Google (which is a work environment I would very much dislike). And second, I have a temperament that allows me to start businesses. My first profitable business was five years of working (admittedly) more than 80 hours a week. I personally made a little more than $2M from it.
That return wasn't monetarily worth my sacrifices, but if we're talking about giving up my life for money, I'd do that instead of doing it for someone else's company.
All of which is to say that everyone is different! Just, to me, the question was "am I willing to not have a happy life for 13 years in exchange for $2M". No, I'm not. If the alternative is a life of making minimum wage, but living, I'd do that.
I wasn’t willing to be unhappy for one day to make more money. When a recruiter from Amazon Retail reached out to me at 46 about a software engineering job, I wasn’t willing to relocate from my in house in the burbs of Atlanta (built in 2016 for less than $350K), and I never wanted to be a software developer for any large company nor did I want to be on call - even it did mean making $100K + more per year.
My bullshit tolerance is extremely low.
The only reason I work at BigTech now (at 49) was because the recruiter suggested a remote position in cloud consulting with no on call.
When I do leave here, it will probably be for a smaller company.
I didn’t have millions in the bank to make that decision. I was working for a small startup that offered 5 weeks PTO.
Yeah, it’s a tough balance for sure. I think the biggest difference is that we have options and greener pastures that have high risk and high reward. My parents were always there for me my whole life so I can’t complain. Would they trade all of that for more money? Depends how much probably. But they never even had the choice to begin with. I often reflect on that now that I’m older with kids. Is a job worth it regardless of money? What can I do so that when they are my age, I can support them to make risky decisions but have a fallback?
Neither have my parents - a retired factory worker and a retired school teacher.
But you know what they did? They have been married for 50+ years never seemed to be overly stressed about their jobs, lived in the same house since 1978 (which they expanded in 2006) and retired at 55.
Inflation. $100k/year in 1980 is $350k/year today. So $2M really isn't that much these days like it was for our parents (or at least, my parents, I'm not sure how old yours are/were).
