> There is a popular idea that substantial wealth belongs mainly to entrepreneurs.

This is probably because 24yo college dropouts are achieving billion dollar valuations after 12 months of work. Their secondary sales are worth more than following all the advice in this article will be for your entire life.

(To say nothing of NVDA, SpaceX, or other big tech acquiring them and making their billions liquid, despite no moat or profitability, just because they have so much money and need to spend it on something.)

No matter how much “grit” you have, you’re still at the mercy of such people, as e.g. the engineers at Windsurf were, who worked super hard but their founders sold to Google, walked away with hundreds of millions, and gave the employees nothing.

Of course, it depends on your meaning of “substantial”. Successful engineers have great wealth too, enough that they can be very happy and buy anything they want. But pretending the two levels are comparable is silly.

Probably the single best take-away from the article is to never stop learning. I also like the tip about keep networking and building relationships.

but I think there is a crowd that rejects too many of the basics at their own detriment. yes, getting work, highly valued work, still helps and helps waaay more reliably for a broader population than other methods, but its just a step. So you still need to do that, You also need to parlay earnings into wealth producing assets, assets that also have their own independent value that is intended to grow.

1. Alimony

2. Child support

The tricky part is that a lot of this advice is situation-dependent. Should you switch to a riskier company that offers a higher compensation? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Should you work late to accomplish goals hoping to get a promotion? It depends.

So how are we supposed to know what to do?

The answer, in my opinion, is people. You have to trust people who are trustworthy and avoid people who are not. As an employee, your success depends on the people who hired you--they are the ones who can promote you or cheat you. The best leaders are the ones who realize that helping you advance is going to help them advance. Help your boss accomplish their corporate goals and they will promote you--not as a reward, but as a bet that you will help them on the next goal.

Bad leaders are either too selfish (fail to promote you) or too incompetent (unable to rise, even with your help). You need to learn to avoid them.

Therefore, my advice is this: Look at the leaders in your company--people who could plausibly hire you. Which ones are the best bets? Which ones have both the talent and the integrity to succeed? If you're lucky there's more than one and you can work to get on their team. If you're unlucky, there are none and you need to find a different company.

Specifically pieces about how to be valuable in a pragmatic and honest way.