25% of people are researchers at Google? Are you saying that's what you think it is at the moment or hypothetically? Research is a tiny tiny proportion of Google's work.
"R&D" is what SWEs do. If you're developing anything new, such as a new software system, then you are doing R&D by definition.
"Production" is something like building the same factory that was built thousands of times before, to fabricate the same widgets that were fully designed by an R&D team.
The actual top researchers at a place like Google would be making way more than $250k.
"Production" is something like building the same factory that was built thousands of times before, to fabricate the same widgets that were fully designed by an R&D team.
The actual top researchers at a place like Google would be making way more than $250k.