[sidlls]

This matches my observations. On the "technical ladder" I'm the equivalent of a Senior Manger or Director (or, less commonly, VP). My pay is definitely less than anybody at those positions in truth, and the tech ladder generally tops off just north of $200k base, as I've seen it. Outliers exist, the plural of anecdote is not data, and similar disclaimers apply.

[themagician]

This is the ladder for just about everything outside of specialized medicine and law. There's just not that many people outside of management anywhere with a $250k+ salary. There's plenty of people who make that much, but it's usually through commissions, additional equity, etc..

Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft employ over 500,000 people. I'd be surprised if there are more than 500 engineers with a salary over $250k between them.

Maybe what someone should do is poach all 500 and see what they come up with. The burn rate would only be $10 million a month. Maybe they could invent AI.

[phamilton]

> I'd be surprised if there are more than 500 engineers with a salary over $250k between them.

You're conflating things. Nobody says everyone has over $250k salary. They do say that Senior Engineers at Google and Facebook make over $250k total compensation.

As someone who has made over $250k total year comp at a big company in the Bay Area, I will tell you there are far more than 500 engineers doing so.

[taurath]

Salary no. Total comp can be 100% or more of salary - they pay people in stock.

[sidlls]

It's still not equivalent, in my experience.

People on the same rung of the "tech ladder" as those on the rung of the "traditional ladder" are compensated less in total and also frequently in any given dimension (e.g. salary, stock, whatever).

[poikniok]

Okay, but what is the point of saying that base comp tops out at just over 200k? Quite often people with 200k bases make 500k+ total comp, so it is very misleading to focus on the base. After all Sundar Pichai's base is $652,500, but total comp is 200 million ...

[joshuamorton]

Even that's not quite true, Pichai's annual comp is likely much lower than that, since his 200m grant is over some number of years. (Which is to say, talking about compensation is confusing).

[sidlls]

"Quite often" is controversial at best.

[joshuamorton]

I think it depends on your definition of "quite common". 100% of the time? No. 5% of the time, also no.