It is an unfortunate truth that Microsoft's pay between entry level to somewhere around principal is not competitive with a substantial number of companies. That is not to say that Microsoft doesn't provide other benefits, but top tier compensation is not one of them.
I don't mind. When I look at the vast majority of software engineering jobs out there even Microsoft compensation is good, and perfectly fine for Seattle.
I used to work at Google too (in Mountain View). Believe it or not I liked working at Google and I also like working at Microsoft.
I don't need to chase top tier compensation. I just do things I enjoy where I'm learning and my career can progress. Right now I'm mostly writing in Go working on an OSS project managed by the Cloud Native Compute Foundation.
As an aside, early retirement is not a goal of mine.
