It's good because if you don't know data structures, algorithms and how OS manages memory, files, IO and so on... you are just a web developer who knows how to use your tool.
You can't discuss with people over performance, or why memcached has better performance than redis in some special cases and know why by your knowledge, not some random article you've read explaining why on the web, you can't build the tools you use if you had to. You can't explain much of the ruby, PHP or any language you use's internals. You may grasp what is a garbage collector but can't really reason about it.
Plain horrible, if you ask me. I think it's worth it if you love it.
Otherwise just focus on getting a project manager job or some sort of job you don't need it.
I maintain the carrierwave, minimagick & memcached-manager ruby gems. If you are interested in any and has a decent knowledge of ruby I can help you to get you going(or anyone interested from HN).
I got started by writing PR's, reading the codebase of the projects and making myself helpful whenever I could.
Actually you have a pretty good amount of money for your age, if you keep going like this I'm sure you will get what you want in maybe 20 years.
But seriously. Money is shit. What EVERYONE is striving for is experience. You want to feel the experience of boarding that private jet, gamble 10mi or something.
The experience you are wanting to have is very empty and there's way better stuff to do out there. Learn to draw, paint, do something you are proud of. Be the CEO of a big company. Help homeless people. The experience is what matters, go after it.
From what I've researched, the average worker make around $40k(canadian dolars) and it's about my market average.
Canadians pay around 40% of taxes(not a liberal country, right?).
I'm still in a way better position here in Brazil(in income). I think what is going to change is the lifestyle... but I'm not looking for some lifestyle, I'm young and want to work hard and conquer a lot.
We(brazilians) have a good amount of people on github that are rails-core or maintain very big and successful projects(I do maintain some 4k+ starred projects, for example). This happened probably because the CEO or somebody got emotional from a bad hire and think all brazilians are bad.
I want to get my H1B soon in order to work in a better environment(and a more liberal economy) and I'm sure this kind of comment won't make anyone's mind as everyone I've worked with in open source with treated me with equal respect.
You can't discuss with people over performance, or why memcached has better performance than redis in some special cases and know why by your knowledge, not some random article you've read explaining why on the web, you can't build the tools you use if you had to. You can't explain much of the ruby, PHP or any language you use's internals. You may grasp what is a garbage collector but can't really reason about it.
Plain horrible, if you ask me. I think it's worth it if you love it.
Otherwise just focus on getting a project manager job or some sort of job you don't need it.