hedge said:
What did you do (grad school, career move, job move, new skill, etc...) that pushed you into to that stratosphere of earnings?
finance degree. i would up in kind of a niche field in operations for a huge corp right out of school, then for the first 10-15 years of my career i job hopped a lot. if i stopped learning, or if i felt i could get a promotion and more money by leaving, i left as soon as possible. sometimes as soon as 18-24 months in. that really accelerated my salary a lot as i was compounding 15-20% increases instead of accepting the 3% i would likely have received if i stayed, and i learned how a lot of different companies do what i do. and i always made sure to leave on excellent terms which paid off tremendously as i have been hired back to a place i left in a higher role several times.
the other thing that really poured gas on my earning potential was going into consulting. got a lot of exposure to VP/CXO types that i never would have had otherwise. i learned a ton and my network grew absurdly fast. i wish i had gone straight into consulting to start my career, by the time i got in i was starting a family and the travel made it kind of impractical so i had to get out. if you are single with no kids, find a consulting gig.
in short, be aggressive about proactively increasing your salary early on by moving around, but never leave on bad terms. your network is your net worth. other than that, find something to do that all companies need and work your ass off to become extremely good at it.