[bradlys]

Are you working at the companies that show that level of pay? Are you located geographically the same as those offers?

levels.fyi does not say everyone makes $300k+ - it says people at specific companies in a specific region make that much. It makes that quite obvious from how you have to select the companies, the level, and then you see where those offers are geographically and with how much experience/tenure.

[MuffinFlavored]

Is there a map that shows the data geographically? It's hard to tell given the list of salaries + cities to find data the compares to my city.

[jldugger]

I expect to see the high wages are highly concentrated in SV. My employer has a clear policy that leaving the bay area comes with a pay cut. Some folks think it's worth it. Time will tell.

[radres]

Why don't you try https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer

search for a city and see if it compares in any way to your salary?

[MuffinFlavored]

You can't search for cities to my knowledge.

[Zaheer]

Not yet - in the works! :)

[ryandrake]

A lot of people forget that. They see a few people at a FAANG company making $400k and conclude that everyone at that level makes about that much.

People also disregard the infamous “4 year cliff”: At most of these companies, your initial stock offer fully vests in 4 years, so your 5th year, your take-home comp nose-dives. Even if you get modest raises and “refresh” stock grants (which not all companies do), you’re likely taking a huge hit in year 5. I’d be interested in a levels.fyi filtering out people’s first four years.

[twblalock]

At most big companies the refresher grants are large enough to prevent a cliff.

[valleyjo]

Most maybe... but not all. Amazon and Microsoft to name at least two.

[esoterica]

No company is stupid enough to make their employees take a >50% paycut in year 5, unless they are intentionally signaling that the employee is not desired and should leave. If they did everyone would quit on their 4th anniversary. Refreshers typically exceed or match the initial grant.

Even if they DID make you take a paycut you could jump ship every four years anyway, so why would you care about comp past year 4?

[joshuamorton]

There are no companies where refreshers exceed or match the initial grant.

At Google, they're between 25 and 50%, depending on a lot of stuff. My initial grant was ~150k, my first refresher was ~40k, and it's a wash if my 4th year refresh will match my first year, that will likely come down to if I make L5 or not.

[Bahamut]

At Apple, they are very generous with refreshers - my initial grant was $105k, and my refresh grant was $125k and I expect at least similar, if not more, for my refresher in a couple of months. The only reason my refresh did not exceed my initial grant was because my initial grant climbed almost 40% in value in that time.

[throwaway7443]

Counter-example from Apple: I spent 4 years there getting good performance reviews without a single refresh grant, and left on my 4 year anniversary. Most of my peers claim to have gotten one small refresh grant in that time, but certainly not one every year. Maybe it varies by team.

[Bahamut]

I have been told there is guidance that generally that either management gives a lot of stock or none.

It probably does also vary with your role/responsibilities - I am a software engineer in SWE on high visibility/impact work. Apple does definitely does make you earn refreshes - they don't give them for average performance oftentimes is my understanding, there seems to be a lot of stories out there that this is the case.

[twblalock]

I’ve received refreshes larger than my initial grant, so there is at least one company that does it.