Where I live, 500k would be enough to live my life until I die using basic safe investments and planning. I might not be able to take lavish trips, but I could live comfortably off of that for decades.

Do you live in an urban USA area?

No but maybe 4 years? Plus growth in savings and investments from the rest of a software engineers highly paid career? 10 years without staff level income has me at around a million already. Pay off a house and do what ever you want with another million.Plus you can use that money to pay down high interest loans like mortgages and save more

Edit: never work again doesn't have to be the goal, 2-3mil in the bank, everything paid off. I can get a job writing low stress Haskell and rust or something pointless and still make Sr eng money, like a measly 200k lol

No, but it might be enough to COASTFire, or get a dream house and not stress about the payments, or set up a nest egg, or just lower stress about quitting any future jobs.

It's not black and white, front loading some stress in early career can really change life trajectories, even if it's not a long term lifestyle thing.

I am working a high stress job (that I quite enjoy) at a FAANG company, and i've made enough money here that I could take a much lower paying job at any point and not need to worry about saving for retirement or paying for kids colleges. It's not retire now rich by any means, but it's definitely alleviating some financial worries I used to have.

At $500k per year salary, in NYC and SF, your overall tax burden is about 50% (including federal, state, city, sales and property tax).

So really if you save half your money, you are only saving $125k per year.

What is the significance of 2 years? Surely, people capable of earning $500k per year are capable of working more than 2 years, at high salaries less than $500k, still allowing them to sock away more than $500k.

$5M to $10M should provide sufficient passive income, even in coastal California.

That depends on your expenses, obviously, but if you're serious you should check out the FIRE movement. There's viable strategies even for lower incomes.