Make The Switch — Entrepreneurship vs. High-Paying Jobs

In 2025 North American professionals are faced with an age-old dilemma as old as ambition itself: remain in a cushy high-paying job or take the leap into the wild unknown of entrepreneurship? Consider Sarah Zhang, a 34-year-old Chinese-American woman who quit her $250,000-a-year job as a senior product manager at Amazon in October 2024. She left her corporate job for freelance work and a startup dream, a question many high earners in the tech and finance world are asking: Is it better to hold on to the steady paycheck or follow the entrepreneurial flame? Sarah's story is not just hers — it's a larger cultural tug-of-war between stability and freedom, income and passion. So let's dig into this dilemma, and why high-earners are reconsidering their paths and what the data shows, as well as how real people are finding their way through this high-stakes decision.

Sarah's Leap — From Corporate to Creative

Sarah Zhang had a hectic Amazon tenure. I felt like a machine, bulldozed by endless deadlines and cross-department meetings, she said in an interview with Fast Company. Her Seattle job, in October 2024, she left, and plunged into freelancing — consulting for tech expos, developing product strategies for startups and taking pottery and photography classes at a community college. Her first month's earnings? A paltry $2,000 — approximately what she earned in half a week at Amazon. Leaving that paycheck enabled me to recreate the soundtrack of my life, she said.

Sarah isn't the only one facing this paycheck cliff dive. There are still some high-paying fields (tech and finance, for example) where work is still lucrative—the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) stated the average tech salary was $104,420 as of October 2024, more than double the national average of $48,060, while senior financial analysts or traders routinely take home over $150,000. But one piece, 2025 Tech Job Market Forecast from Forbes, commented on some change: although tech is bouncing back, the fast-tracking of A.I. is causing a shake-up in opportunities. High-earners are leaping to nontraditional tech sectors such as financial services, or — bolder — launching their own companies.

Why the shift? For Sarah, it was about legacy: I don't want to look back at 40 and just remember meetings and overwage. Her sentiment resonates throughout the U.S. workforce. TechCrunch said that more than 150,000 tech workers lost their jobs in 2024; the layoffs affected many of the giants like Tesla and Amazon. That instability has high-earners reconsidering: Is a big salary really safe, or is it time to take control?

The Data: The High Earners Want Out

Let's break it down, numerically. According to a Q4 2024 report by the job search website Ladders, which analyzed more than 500,000 high-salaried jobs (more than $250,000) it found remote work options increased by 18 percent over the last year, with 10 percent of these top-tier jobs fully remote. This flexibility gives high-earners the latitude to try on new paths — including entrepreneurship. A new 2024 survey from FoundersBeta adds fuel: 32% of North American tech workers and 27% of finance employees say they thought about starting a business the past two years. Among those making more than $200,000, it reaches 41%, up from 23% in 2019. Clearly, that lured more high-earners to ditch the corporate suit for a startup shirt.

What's driving this? Economic rewards are a major lure — Stripe founders Patrick and John Collison converted a startup in 2011 into a $95 billion empire that inspires dreamers by the thousands. But this isn't only about money. Jobs that come with high pressure are stressing people out. North American IT workers earn $113,211 on average, according to Skillsoft's 2024 IT Skills and Salary Report, but 44% say they are overwhelmed by new AI demands. I was living on coffee, fraying at the edges, Sarah said, a common lament among burned-out high earners.

The startup culture on North America also pulls. Silicon Valley's battle cry — Fail fast, fail often — is nearly a religion. (From CIO Magazine, January 2025: Software engineers and cloud experts are still wanted, but Y Combinator noted a 15% jump in applications in 2024. High-earners don't just want to work for the next Elon Musk — they want to become the next Elon Musk.

Read Real Life: High Earners Who Took the Leap

Sarah's story is only the first. Meet a handful of North Americans high earners who hit the same crossroads.

Lee (name changed), an ex-Google senior software engineer, was making $220,000 annually plus stock bonuses. Early in 2024, layoffs swept through his team—Jack's job was safe, but his sense of security was not. I realized even a high salary makes you removeable, he said. That October, he left to start an AI education tools startup, raising $500,000 in seed funding. Cornell University's 2023 grad data supports his leap: 16% of 2022 computer science grads went into finance, ticking up to 22%, while those creating businesses went from 5% to 8%.

And Sara's story didn't stop with freelancing either. By early 2025, she is building a small startup around sustainable packaging SaaS solutions, which she told Fast Company about. Amazon taught me how to iterate fast, but I wanted to do something with a purpose, she said. Now her three-person team is piloting with a Seattle retailer. Writes Forbes on this latter trend: financial services as a tech talent hotspot, where banks and fintechs are hungry for AI and blockchain experts — ideal for high-earners to jump ship or start up.

Not every story gleams, however. Mark Thompson (name changed), a cloud architect at Microsoft making $250,000, quit in 2023 in order to launch a data analytics company. It folded under fierce competition by 2024, and cost him nearly $1 million worth of savings. I underestimated how hard it'd be, he says. Next time, I'd get a co-founder. The risk is affirmed by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA): 20% of startups go bankrupt in their first year, 50% in five.

Why High Salaries No Longer Are Enough

People might think I'm nuts, walking away from $250,000 for a $20-an-hour gigs, Sarah told Fast Company. But her self-awareness rings true among many U.S. high-earners. According to Dice's 2024 Tech Salary Report, tech workers age 45+ are more likely to leave the industry following layoffs, while 50+ workers disproportionately transition to lower-paying non-tech positions or startups. They're not hunting for money — they're hunting for meaning.

This turn exposes deeper truths. The stuff of grown-up dreams, high salaries are becoming less intoxicating. The mass layoffs at Tesla (10%) and Amazon (5%) in 2024 (per TechCrunch) jolted more than 4,000 workers, revealing the precariousness of secure jobs. In North America, the startup ecosystem provides a launchpad—CBRE's 2025 Scoring Tech Talent Report indicates that demand for talent from non-tech industries such as finance now competes with tech, creating new career opportunities. And then there's the gut: I don't want to look back when I'm at 60 and regret not trying, an former Apple engineer told Forbes in December 2024. Finally, millionaires are starting to awaken to their dreams. 

Trends In 2025: Jump Ship Or Start Fresh?

And this trend is only going to grow leading into Q1 2025. CompTIA's 2024 Tech Workforce Report shows expected U.S. tech jobs growth from 6 million in 2024 to 7.1 million by 2034, exceeding average growth. IDC warns that by 2026, a global IT skills shortage could cost $5.5 trillion, so high-earners have choices. Software engineers and data pros also top the list for CIO Magazine, but 60% of IT managers are moving toward contract hires to meet AI and cloud demands. That's an opportunity for high-earners to freelance while they save up to start a company. Meanwhile, Forbes has said fintech startups will be growing at about 12% through late 2025, siphoning off more talent from tech and finance. Sarah's $1.5 million of savings in Amazon stocks provided her with a safety net — many North American high-earners are relying on nest eggs or VC funding to make the leap.

Which Path Is Right for You?

Sarah summarized it during her interview with Fast Company: I think there can be multiple reboots in a life. That's the takeaway for North America's wealthy. Jack's entrepreneurial success, Sarah's brave curveball and Mark's hard-won lesson suggest that there's no silver bullet when it comes to work. Stay in the corporate rat race for a big paycheck, leap to a hot industry, like fintech, or build your own empire — it all depends on where you feel you belong. The job market is a blank canvas in spring 2025 — all that's needed is a fresh coat of paint, and some professional ambition. So, is it the corporate suit or a startup shirt? It takes courage, and a willingness to pay the price, whatever you choose, Sarah's journey opens our minds to.