If you want to have "made it", go start a startup. Being an employee generally means working 40-60 hour weeks for other people's dreams.
Don't know maybe I'm not elite founder material.
I'm a team lead and make less than an entry level developer at any SF or NYC shop, but I'm willing to bet that I can save more and have more put away for retirement than most as well.
Unless the start up had something to do with politics, and you learned a lot about politics, you can't use any of your skills(related to actual work) to 'come out ahead' in a big company.
Not everyone wants to work on developing consumer App/Product, marketing and sales. There are people who would like to work on libraries, algorithms or just a large swat of data. I'm sure people developing React, Angular, Bootstrap, TensorFlow etc are happy with what they are doing.
Or just move to a country that doesn't allow worker exploitation like that.
what working for somebody else means is (among others) peace of mind - I do my hours, extra effort if necessary, but that's it. the moment i leave office, I can go climbing with my fiancee, take care of kids (not there yet), and generally do stuff I wil have fond memories of, rather than chasing gazillionth thing just to keep things running.
