Silicon Valley may be a bit special or even a bit of an outlier in the way engineers are compensated and cared for (or pampered as it might seem at times) but as the saying goes: The grass is always greener on the other side.<p>Plenty of money to burn in one of the most expensive places in the world for many people probably means just that: A lot of money earned but nothing to show for after years of work.<p>Compared to that you can make a decent living as an engineer almost anywhere in the world and not blow away all your hard-earned money at the same time.<p>Then, there are almost certainly Silicon Valley companies where you face stress, burnout and dysfunctional management just as you would in your run-of-the-mill enterprise company that merely treats developers as fungible grunt workers.<p>The thing that many engineers - perhaps more so outside Silicon Valley - don&#x27;t seem to get is that they don&#x27;t have to put up with that kind of abrasive behaviour. That&#x27;s the most important privilege that comes with this profession nowadays: You basically don&#x27;t have to struggle to find a way to make a decent amount of money as much as other people do.<p>If your work environment is a Dilbertesque nightmare you don&#x27;t have to just endure that until you retire (or drop dead due to stress, whichever happens first ...). Opportunities are a plenty, not just in Silicon Valley but almost everywhere today!