A Bengaluru-based software developer has reportedly turned down a promotion that would have increased his annual salary by around Rs 20 lakh, choosing instead to protect his personal time and family commitments.
The 31-year-old developer currently earns about Rs 45 lakh a year. According to a LinkedIn post by Rohan Dhawan, founder of business consultancy firm UAbility, accepting the new role would have pushed his compensation beyond Rs 65 lakh.
On paper, the offer appeared difficult to refuse. It came with a higher designation, a larger team and a significant jump in pay. However, the responsibilities attached to the promotion were also expected to change his daily routine considerably.
Dhawan said the developer would have had to regularly attend calls with US-based colleagues late at night, with such meetings expected on four nights every week. The role would also involve more travel and managing a team nearly twice the size of his current one. That meant his working hours would no longer be limited to the office. Even weekends, which might officially remain free, could become difficult to fully disconnect from work.
The developer’s personal priorities also played a role in his decision. He and his wife are planning to have a child next year, while he follows a regular fitness routine and trains five mornings a week. He also has a weekly dinner with his parents. His father reportedly struggled to understand why he would reject such a large pay increase.
“20 lakh extra mil raha hai. What is the problem? Nowadays people are changing jobs to get 10% hike,” his father told him, according to Dhawan’s post.
Dhawan summed up the trade-off by writing, “Every offer letter tells you exactly what you’ll be paid. None of them tell you what you’ll be paying.”
Another software developer buys Rs 670 mansion
Another technology professional, Tony Yuhuai Wu, offers a very different picture of how far a career in AI can take someone financially. The China-born researcher has reportedly purchased a luxury mansion in Hillsborough, near Silicon Valley, for US$70 million (around Rs 670 crore). The purchase has not been publicly confirmed by Wu.
Known as Villa de Verano, the property sits across 12 acres and reportedly includes six bedrooms, a nine-hole golf course, a 150-seat outdoor amphitheatre and a 2,100-gallon saltwater aquarium.
Wu’s career has moved quickly. He completed a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at the University of New Brunswick in 2015 before earning a PhD in machine learning from the University of Toronto in 2021. His adviser was AI researcher Jimmy Ba, who later joined the founding team of Elon Musk’s xAI.
Before joining xAI, Wu interned at OpenAI and Google’s DeepMind and later worked as a research scientist at Google. In 2023, he became one of the founding members of xAI, where he worked on Grok and areas including AI mathematics and machine reasoning.
Wu left xAI in February following SpaceX’s acquisition of the company. Announcing his departure, he wrote on X: “It’s time for my next chapter. It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what’s possible.”
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