[swimorsinka]

Take a look at Glassdoor. What you're saying is accurate, but where Google, Facebook, etc really take off is in equity compensation.

In my case at Goog, I started off with a small equity grant, vesting over 4 years. So after the first year, I had equity vesting every quarter.

Assuming you do ok/well, you'll get refresher grants every single year after that.

Fast forward 3 or 4 years, and you have 4 separate grants vesting every single quarter.

This quickly adds up to 50+K a year, and that's where these numbers come from, even if they're not reflected in your base pay.