This document is intended to provide advice for people working in industry, but primarily for those working in software engineering or very closely related high-paying tech fields such as security, IT, machine learning, data science, etc.
This is written from the perspective of 6+ years experience, but hopefully contains some good nuggets of advice even for those who have experience beyond that.
Not for salary, not for status, not for "career growth". All of those things are just proxies for things people think will make them happy. Sometimes the best job you can have is a "rest and vest" position working 5 hours a week for comparatively less salary, because time spent with family and on your hobbies is more important than the salary growth you give up in exchange.
Always think about a job (and anything else) in terms of tradeoffs. How good is the food in the area? Can you enjoy your favorite hobbies in the area (skiing, camping, sports, esports, scuba, surfing, etc)?