As someone who’s worked in Silicon Valley for 13 years… A lot of senior developers that work at big tech companies can earn over $500k total compensation (salary plus bonus plus stock) per year, and end up saving enough and having enough investments to retire early and mostly live off the returns. This strategy is often referred to as FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early).

Of course, people still want something to keep them busy, so they tend to end up doing something they always wanted to do but never had the time or money to do it. For example, I know someone who retired in their 40s and started doing woodworking full time.