> At the end of the 90th and beginning of the 00th ("dotcom bubble") it was a common saying that if as a programmer, when you are 30 or 40, you don't have a very successful company (and thus basically set for life), you basically failed in life;

This wasn't common anywhere except for maybe the Silicon Valley bubble.

The rest of the US and even the world could see that not having a very successful company of your own is to equal to being a failure.