How the Valley treats experienced people
Sometimes you don't make enough money to retire early from a combination of bad luck and poor financial decisions. In my career, I followed a pattern of going to a company just a bit too late to get the really low priced options. I've ended up with dozens of former co-workers who are multimillionaires. I had a family and was (in hindsight) too conservative about when I went to a company. I also was a "paper" millionaire during the dot-com boom. The start-up where I worked was bought making my options worth millions. There was a 6 month lock out and during that time the stock price went from $75 to $0.75. My options were at $2. Did that make me a bad developer? At another company I had options at $7. The stock peaked a few years later at $60. I never exercised any because I was greedy. I was going to cash out when it hit $75. When I left the company after 6 years, the stock was at $8. All in all, I was almost always one of the best developers, but I never made "FU" money. I did learn to exercise options as soon as they were worth a decent amount, but never made enough to be rich that way. I'm sure there are many old developers who were as dumb financially as I was.