Yep, and also just want to add that the engineers making ~400k are paying around ~150k in taxes, probably have a PhD so they didn't even earn much of anything and lived off of instant ramen packs until they were 30, with over 100k in debt. This is the boat I'm in, and unless I get lucky and get one of these jobs when I graduate, I probably won't be able to afford having kids until I'm 40, while my buddies who started working right away already have a house and a kid or two. We're all part of the same working class, and the ones with equity love to see us squabble over what is pennies to them. You also don't pay as much tax on capital gains as salary.