>Once you are at the level where your compensation covers everything you want, it’s more of a game to increase it than necessity.
This is also why many people choose to plateau at a certain point. In the Google/Facebook scheme, that's often L5 - I've talked with a number of employees who debate whether they even want the responsibility that comes with an L6 promo and are quite convinced they wouldn't want L7+
Their mindset would probably be foreign to the author of this article, but I can see it and it lines up with what you said - at a certain point, if comp is high enough, I'd prefer to be well paid AND have free time. I've worked with some truly incredible L7+ engineers, but they correlate strongly with people who never turn off and seemingly never stop working, and that's simply not something that appeals to me in life.
