Something I've noticed in tech: if you've worked at a big company and earned hundreds of thousands in stock, that doesn't make you any better than someone that hasn't. It simply means you passed an interview and worked at a big company for a long enough period.

There's a bias in certain circles to thinking that *because* you have earned a certain amount of money, that you have *earned* it and are therefore *better* than others. This is not true.

Some people choose not to work in those roles, for many different reasons.

There are many (often in this category) who also cannot understand that if you work in tech that being essentially (or near) broke is possible. They think that everyone who has worked in this space has done the "worked in a big tech firm and earned stock somewhere" type thing.

Most people don't. Most people in tech are still month to month or pretty close to it.

The outliers are still the ones at the big tech firms.

The ones at the big tech firms are the ones with the loud voices and the big followings on twitter.

Don't be fooled.

For the avoidance of doubt I wasn't at Amazon long enough to get any stock, so there's that.

And I have never had a payout larger than £25k from any of the startups I worked at (and none of them were even close to that figure if I recall).