Bill Gates didn’t find dropping out of college to be career limiting either. Any good STEM person would know not to argue by exceptions.
That said, staying an engineer is very unlikely to make you wealthy compared to moving into some administrative leadership role. But there is absolutely no disadvantage of starting as an engineer before transitioning into a leadership role.
@50N40W We HAVE to make the “clever engineer” into a new meme… 
The clever engineer would never waste money buying a new car…
The clever engineer would always max out his company’s 401K matching contribution…
The clever engineer would never bet against a Sicilian when death is on the line…
Bill Gates is an exception. The 10000+ people at Microsoft who became millionaires are not all exceptions. Nor are the thousands each at Google, Facebook, Apple, Ebay, and Oracle. And there are tens of thousands more, with wealth created at thousands of smaller companies you probably never heard of.
Sure, the majority of engineers are happy solving problems while getting a decent compensation. There is nothing wrong with that. But there is a very good reason that technology has created a large number of people that appear on the Forbes 400. And for each one of them, there are dozens of people with a 9 digit net worth, hundreds with an 8 digit net worth, and thousands with a 7 digit net worth.
Interestingly though, I find that the view on how financially successful engineers can be varies with geography. It is mostly people in entrepreneurial areas (Silicon Valley, Boston, etc.) that see how financially rewarding it can be.
The multi millionaires (and some billionaires) in Texas and Georgia and Illinois who made their fortunes in tech are laughing right now at the idea that you need to be in an “entrepreneurial area” to become financially successful.
I am certainly not saying that the coasts are the only place where tech people can do very well, but rather about the public’s general perception. In Silicon Valley in particular, you see lots of young wealthy people, and that is generally tech money.
In contrast, we have relatives in the mid-west that believe that have never seen tech wealth and they are under the impression that becoming a doctor is the only good way to have a comfortable living.
“Texas and Georgia and Illinois” could be the “etc.” 
Austin Texas doesn’t understand tech wealth?
Lots of cities have growing tech scenes- Denver, DC, Pittsburgh, for instance.
I know a bit about Silicon Valley/Boston (having worked in both places) and tech millionaires (my wife and I both individually being one back in the day in the 90’s).
I still say that tech is career limiting compared to professional services.
Technology hasn’t created the many on the Forbes 400 list. It is the business idea and successfully selling people something they absolutely don’t need that created the many.
Such business ideas may be engineering based, or may not be. Being in engineering does not mean not being able to come up with such a business idea, even though engineering is not the only path that can lead to such a business idea.
Austin is a highly entrepreneurial area, as is Pittsburgh these days. Denver I just don’t know. Kansas City–I don’t think so.
But thank you for reinforcing my main point which is that for entrepreneurial types, engineering can be lucrative. At the company I worked at, hundreds of us could have retired in our late 20s and early 30s. Some tried to (usually failing, as the energy required for a startup doesn’t translate well into early retirement). Some continued doing what they were doing before as they really enjoyed the work. Others, including me, changed careers to see what else could be interesting.
For future reference, those stock options that made the Microsoft millionaires were given to every employee - secretaries, janitors, HR, programmers. They made their millions by holding the options while the MSFT stock price was doubling every 18 months during the 1990s, an exceptional run not often seen. Those who cashed out each year never became millionaires unless their salaries+bonus got them there.
The clever engineer holds his stock options.
The clever engineer decides to hold or cash any stock options based on evaluating the risk and reward relative to his/her own personal financial situation.
Remember that stock options or stock in one’s employer concentrates risk, in that if your employer gets into trouble, both your job and your savings/investments could be in trouble at the same time.
I think the truth is more complicated than that. The first several thousand employees could have sold as their options vested and still become millionaires. But perhaps half of them needed to get the timing right, selling into the late 90s, but not holding into the 2000s.
Correction: The clever engineer knows when to sell his stock options.
The clever engineer is god. (S)he knows everything. Almost every techie friend I had in 1999 was speculating on stocks in margin accounts and got wiped out.
I must say though that startup cash is nice. Most startups will never make a profit, but there will be massive wealth transfer from the unsuspecting and greedy middle class to the savvy startup founders and the vulture capitalists that fund them.
It’s all about eyeballs, man.
Perhaps relevant to these forums:
The clever engineer (or clever anyone else) lives below his/her income so that s/he will have money to help his/her kids with college expenses (along with other financial goals such as retirement savings), instead of becoming someone who is unable to contribute anything even though his/her income is high enough to prevent getting financial aid.
Ok, I will bite. Please explain this massive wealth transfer from the middle class going to VCs.
It’s a nebulous statement so it’s hard to tell his exact meaning. My guess is this: venture funds pool together money that in large part comes from middle class savings investing in those funds. VCs take a fraction of the funds as administration costs, which is how they make money. Startup founders use investment to make profit, off of selling the company either through an acquisition or a public offering. The SV scene has been seen with increasing scrutiny in the past few years, with a lot of funny money being thrown around. Hence his comments.
The Forbes 400 list contains extreme outliers, almost to the point of being irrelevant to this discussion. That said, if you look at self-made persons on the list without special connections, they typically founded or got in early at a successfully company. In modern times, the easiest route to found a company that has the potential to grow to Forbes 400 levels is in tech. This relates to how all of of the self-made billionaires who are under 40 I see on the list either founded or got in early at some kind of tech startup (Snapchat, Facebook, AirBNB, Uber, Twitter, Theranos, etc). Being an engineer or other expert in the company’s technology would assist in this goal, and relates to why such a large portion of this group (self-made and younger) has a tech background, including engineering/CS degrees.