There is no need to reiterate how difficult it is to build a successful startup. My point was that even after controlling for this difficulty, for the average developer it's going to be "easier" to make $1mm by starting their own startup. The vast majority of finance professionals with target backgrounds won't break 200k in income per year. There are outliers in every profession and sure there are some hotshot salespeople and quants that make 1mm+/yr, but: when I look closely, and from talking with friends who work at namebrand banks and PE groups, it seems they're no more prevalent in finance than successful startup founders are in tech (i'd still like to see hard data on this because there are so many ways to compensate people and most have no incentive to report this, in both industries).

Now on to compensation: comparing apples to oranges, a Goldman Sachs VP's total compensation is about 240k, or roughly what a senior software engineer at Google makes. If I were a brilliant developer, I would rather work at Google and make the same amount than going through the meat grinder than is your IB to become a GS VP.