[trustfundbaby]

Believe it. I'm based in Austin, and a few years ago was making about $125k as a senior dev when Apple came calling. They wanted me to move out to California which I didn't want to do, so to blow them off, I did a small calculation (cost of living, california taxes, etc) to arrive at the conclusion that at the very minimum I'd need $180k for that move to even start to make sense for me.

The recruiter explained how they could easily pay me a $140-160K base and give me about $40k in RSUs to get me up to $200k if I was the right candidate. I'd never heard of RSUs before that and he had to explain what they were to me.

The easy with which it was offered definitely helped me understand why $250k in total comp was definitely something that could be done at the bigger tech companies