Not offended at all. I do see some Meditations showing through here. There is a lot of wisdom to be found in that work, and plenty of parallels to be drawn to the modern world -- Aurelius was, after all, dealing with the Antonine Plague just before dawn in the decline of the Roman Empire.

My biggest issue with Stoicism is that it is, at its best, basically therapy. Most of the advice in Meditations revolves around putting things into various perspectives that make a challenging situation not feel so bad. This can be quite valuable! However I think there's only so much therapy a person can do before they want to start actively changing their situation. I think the essay wants to go beyond Stoicism, to illustrate a radical path one can take to hopefully alter the circumstance of their existence positively.

I have absolutely no qualms with anyone who takes the "boring" path to provide for themselves or their family (to say otherwise would make me a hypocrite). However I think we tend to vastly overestimate what our needs are. The average yearly median in the US in 2019 was $35,977 according to the Census. This is the median, so 50% of the population lives on less than that! Probably most of the people at that wage want to make more (don't we all?) but I think the author is making the case for giving up on the luxury of tech pay in exchange for finding some actual purpose in our lives. I don't think that's disrespectful, it's just another option.