It's funny that most of my high school buddies grind their jobs for a paycheck, but as a software developer I'm supposed to "find a company I'm passionate about" so work "has meaning".

Hard lessons I learned over the last 24 months:

- Titles don't matter. Promotions provide minimal pay increases. It's better to focus on finding another job.

- Job difficulty doesn't scale linearly with salary. I'm working roughly the same as I did in jobs where I earned 1/3 the salary I get now.

- RSUs are the way to get crazy money. I completely disregarded them early in my career.