"Not everybody will succeed at becoming a bigshot and when you see your professional life only as a ladder climbing, the chances are that rather than becoming a famous man and a big operator directing twenty people to work on your brilliant ideas you end up as unhappy mid-management overweight pencil-pusher making flowcharts for your business elk superiors while fending off fellow back-stabbers. I have seen group bosses of this unhappy kind losing their job, in their late 40s or early 50s - and there are almost no job openings available to them and they cannot go back to bench either. So maybe for awhile they were making 50k more than you did and they have more expensive mortgage and now they got no job prospects.

I am not discouraging people from trying to make the best of their career and life, but in industry a merger can do nasty things with your best plans, irrespective how good you were you may not get valued by the new corporate masters - and you may find that all those years of ladder climbing were for nothing and after you gave your company the best part of your life, after you projected your aspirations into your project and spent many weekends to make it a success, you get dropped like worn-out tool."