This idea that "eventually you make enough where money doesn't matter anymore" is a meme that couldn't be more wrong. Its the kind of thing said by someone who has never made that much money, but who is extrapolating their current relationship with money to a compensation multiples higher; then saying "well if I can live on $X right now, then the Y in $X+Y wouldn't matter, so money must not matter (past some level) (and, coincidentally, that level is always somewhere around what I make) (weird how it always works out like that, right?)".
You can say that it shouldn't matter; that a $200k salary decrease to someone making seven figures shouldn't matter, because they're rich and they can take it. Maybe that's a correct assertion; that it shouldn't matter. But: it does.
Well, personally, I'm in a situation where I struggle to spend more than half of what I earn, including my mortgage repayment.
I'm not a cheap person, if I need to spend money on something, I will. It's just that my life style and affinities mean I'm not spending much.
I'm not much of a fashion guy, so no huge collection of expensive clothes.
Nor am I a car guy (I don't even currently own one, and if I were to have one again in the future, it would simply be a tool).
When I travel, the destination is often decided at the last moment, and I'm more of a backpack kind of guy.
When I buying something somewhat expensive (price ~$1000 or more), I'm always evaluating the usefulness of the thing, for example, I kind of want to replace my folk guitar but in fairness, I rarely play my current one, and it's not like this will change with a nicer one (I also have two very nice electric guitars I've not touched in years).
Simply put, partly out of how I was brought-up, partly out of some ecological-consciousness, I do not buy something simply because I can.
Also, regarding this part:
> Its the kind of thing said by someone who has never made that much money
When I make this statement, opposition comes far more often from people "who have never made that much money". My friends with similar or greater earnings get my point of view, even if they don't have the same views, but my friends with lower incomes generally strongly disagree with this kind of view.
A Principal Engineer at my company, could easily increase his salary 20-50% by moving to a FAANG, and can do Leetcode problems in his head, doesn't move. Because he has more independence here and can work on more interesting problems here.
He grew up in relative poverty. He already gets paid a lot. It's enough for him.
Well that's not true... at least not for me. I'm not even at the point of earning excessive amounts of money (research scientist at a german university E13, so about 60kEur). And already now I don't care enough about money to have it influence where I'm thinking about applying...
I went for years not thinking about money, not negotiating or worrying about comp, and making enough that I didn't need to worry or think about it, I just wrote code and did research. It is definitely a thing
I think this is to some extent personality-dependent and not as universal as you posit.
I somewhat fall into the demographic you describe but find myself not really caring about maximizing TC because I’m working on interesting and meaningful problems. (I would never be interested in working on adtech or infosec even for double my pay — I’m just not interested in those areas.)
I have met many in tech whose game is maximizing TC. They’re very vocal but I don’t know if they represent everyone.
Until the dot com era money really wasn’t much of a “thing” here (SV), and you’re right: even now it’s more of an SF thing, but has infected the Valley too.
You can say that it shouldn't matter; that a $200k salary decrease to someone making seven figures shouldn't matter, because they're rich and they can take it. Maybe that's a correct assertion; that it shouldn't matter. But: it does.
Money always matters. Money always matters. Money always matters.