I hated being an employee too, but I found value in suffering the long game by focusing on TC (total compensation) to maximize my knowledge, skills, and war chest to start a business of my own.
Yea eventually that is the only path. Although I think you overestimate what is required (financially) to start an independent business. If you are single and you have funds to last you 6 months, you are probably good to do.
An argument for going deep on a career is that you can build relationships built on trust which let you climb the TC hierarchy. This then accelerates the warchest accumulation, and I'm looking ahead as a married man with decades available.
This is going to take a few years to mature. While it matures, I'm spending next year improving my UX skills and building a WYSIWYG editor for board games.
My aspiration is to ship a single online board game next year, and then I'll open it up as a "roblox for board games"
