When those options are finally vested, they're only worth the difference between the market price and the price at which they were issued - which, given the ups and downs of the markets, may be little. Compare that to the huge payouts that dividends translate into for people like Azim Premji: owning 83.4 per cent of the company, he took in Rs 566 crore as his share of Wipro's dividends for 2003-04.

In contrast, a seriously high IT paycheque, such as Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani's, for instance, amounts to Rs 23 lakh a year. Maybe you're spending patterns make you think differently - as though your lifestyle is beginning to converge on those of the really rich. After all, you have two top-end cars, you eat out, travel abroad and buy top-of-the-line clothes and accessories just whenever you like.

Truth is, it's two incomes - yours and your partner's - that's creating the illusion of great pay. The owners of companies are still earning way, way, waaaaaaay more than you ever will. What's more, even those double-income pay-packets are not buying you the security that the guy in the corner room who owns your company does. As you know pretty well, it's the thinnest of red lines between a fabulous paycheque and a pink slip, the latter often coming not because you're a poor worker, but because the top management ran your company aground.

In sharp contrast, even if your company's bleeding, the top guys who hold shares in it will still be able to cash out at a price you can only dream of, even if it results in a notional loss for them when compared to the historic high of those stock prices. But look at what the illusion of parity is doing to you: it's making you chase your boss's boss's boss in terms of lifestyle statements. You won't buy the Rs 5-lakh sedan when you can afford the EMIs for the Rs 9-lakh

saloon. You won't touch the 2-bedroom apartment in midtown when the monthly mortgage payments for the 4-bedroom villa with a swimming pool for the complex seems feasible. And you will certainly not holiday in Goa when you can do South Africa.

As the bar of satisfaction is raised relentlessly, even as prices of even top-end luxury products drop tantalizingly close to what you think you can afford, your spending goes on making deeper inroads into your earnings. Never forget, as the ad reminds you, we live in an envy-powered economy.

The quick - and wrong - way out is to become a manager. That way, you can hire more people under yourself, ensuring you keep earning more so as to stay higher-paid than your own subordinates. Wrong, because it will still not bridge that gap between the best-paid employee and the owner-CEO.

Whether it's a success or not, you should be able to sell out sooner or later, provided you've been opportunistic enough to pick an industry where potential matters, as no

one's making profits yet. Microland's Pradeep Kar did it consistently, primarily by entering segments that were guaranteed to attract cash-endowed multinationals. Ask recent millionaires like Avnish Bajaj and Suvir Sujan (co-founders of BaaZee.com) and Puneet Dalmia and Alok Mittal ( JobsAhead.com), who pocketed upwards of Rs 5 crore each for selling their companies in part or whole to global competitors.

So, for the really, really, really big bucks - sans worries of being made redundant - quit jockeying for that promotion and start looking at starting your own company, instead.