Earlier quoted context omitted.
Soon-to-be a freshman in college. If you don't mind me asking, what career path do you wish you took?
I believe he was being a being slightly tongue in cheek. In reply to your question though - never follow the money, follow the path where your interests lie and where your strengths lie. Biggest career mistake I ever made was to move from a job I really enjoyed to another because they offered to more than double my salary.
At the beginning of your career, I think the most important thing is to learn. Any company where you're learning a lot is a good place to be.
But I think you need to be able to learn to like what you're doing, even if it doesn't sound like your cup of tea. Get out of your confort zone. Go into a company that does something that's not just IT (that is, not a company that sells stuff for programmers). Human Resources, healthcare, geology, law, finance, advertising, any other domain other than IT. If I were re-doing my career, I'd try to get into any good situation with not only interesting tech, but interesting non-tech problems to solve.
Getting domain expertise outside of tech + strong tech fundamentals is huge, and a great way to build a really good company later on if that's your cup of tea, or be a great consultant or team member.
That way, you get both an interesting job, and very likely, very good financial rewards if you're good at what you're doing.
The worst mistake I've made was getting sucked into a dead-end path and staying because of the money. If I had gotten out early, I would have taken a financial hit early on, but would have continued an upward trajectory instead of plateauing (and working on stuff with non-marketable skills).