We're off in a little rat trap now about what the terminally awesome state is in any given career. If we were talking about salespeople, someone would be saying, "yeah, but how likely is it that you'd ever be a CEO? And hey, if you're a CEO, you might as well have started a company anyways, because most of your wealth comes from a stake."
But it's just a conversational rat trap. Unless your definition of "rich" means "owning a private jet", you never have to come close to being a VP/Engineering to become rich over a carefully managed career. You just have to be good with money.
It was pretty obvious to me.
>> "I eventually want to be rich, so I'm going to be a lawyer, not an artist."
Of course, it should be possible to "get rich" making >$100k year. All it takes is money management.
> In my experience everyone who got rich did it by owning a significant stake in a business (not necessarily a startup or even anything high tech.)
Partnership is "a stake". It can be significant in dollars even if it is insignificant in percentage (and the reverse).