That's contextual. For example, as someone living outside the USA with no immigration pathways, I simply can't get a FAANG salary.

Very true, so you would compare it to the <best job you could get>. But simply saying "It's such a bad idea to take VC money, just bootstrap" is too simple of a statement. Again, I say this as a bootstrapper.

Sure, but they also will have a much more difficult time getting the type of VC money American startups get.

A bootstrapper doesn't need that.

Seems like bootstrapping isn’t just about the money for many bootstrappers, perhaps including you. There’s a type of person who would much rather grind out $150K ARR at something they create and own than pull down $450K/yr at Netflix.

This is true but I think there's also a question about the difference between VC as in huge amounts of money trying to build the next unicorn versus traditional business startup loan levels. I think a lot of startups would be better getting _some_ investment but with a target valuation in the millions rather than billions range. The founders can still do well in that range but they won't have hundreds of employees and expensive offices in NYC.

Right, you can do this to some extent with midwest angel / VC. If you stay out of coastal VC, you can a bit more modest, but the trend for even midwest VC seems to be pushing for unicorns lately...