Kinda. I live in a huge Mormon bastion. They all drive luxury SUV’s filled with kids, large homes staffed by a stay at home mom and an army of housekeepers, landscapers, and sitters. I don’t get how. I don’t want half a dozen kids but right now my wife, son and I are struggling… and we make good money.

I get a little envious when they all pack up and head to Vacation for two weeks, several times per year.

Super blasé uninformed question: are there any other countries where your skillset (career-wise) is valued or over-valued that you could consider "applying" for?

I’m at the top of my pay range for what I do as an engineer. I know the next steps would be to go into middle management, but I’ve seen so many middle managers get fired, I just can’t do that to my family right now (but honestly I hate managing people). The only other option would be to move to a low income city and work from home, but that also comes with a huge set of problems like poor schools, higher crime, and racism of all sorts. As far as another country… I’m not sure, I’ve never looked into it. I’ve spent the last 25 years in Fortune10 companies and most of those are in the US.

I’m at the top of my pay range for what I do as an engineer. I know the next steps would be to go into middle management.

Perhaps not. There's a third path for high end IT growth without going into management: Consulting

Its possible to have a particular specialty which would earn you more than a company could regularly pay for a full time W-2 position. This means you could either work for a consulting company getting months long or year long contracts for project based work using your skills, or you could hang your own shingle and sell yourself in the consulting world on your own. Its a different way of working, but if your skillset is compatible with it, it can be lucrative. It also means managing your own finances differently because you can be in "boom" and "bust" times. You'll have to build your warchest of funds to weather cyclical downturns in the business world.

It also means you can continue to grow your technical skills and salary without having to go into management. Warning: if you are successful, you can see and even more lucrative path with managing your own consulting company.