Equally, yes, some folk rose up through the ranks at fang (or better yet fintech) and make mountains of loot. For each success there's a fair pile of failures though.

To rise up through those ranks, typically you need to make sacrifices. Long working hours, minimal time off, stand-by weekends, emails at night, and (imo) suffering the bs that comes with corporate jobs.

Building your own business are all those things too, but without the corporate bs.

The interesting thing about 500k though is asking what you can do on 500k, you can't do on 300. Or 200. Or in lots of the world, 50.

Time left for relationships, children, holidays, other interests and so on are important to me. So I'm prepared to balance those with raw income. I'm not making anything like 500k per year, but I've turned down fang recruiters because all the money in the world can't make up for what else it would cost me.