Netflix famously doesn't offer stock based compensation as part of their comp arrangements. They offer you a non-trivial cash salary though, that would easily be the sum of cash and equity at a similarly situated company. At least, that's my understanding, anyways.
Now, if they opted into the ESPP and stock options programs with a $1M TC, remember NFLX has 5-6X'd in the last 3 years. Someone who allocated a lot of their TC towards equity could easily be making $3M/yr today.
Probably not. The SWEs top out around $600K a year. $3M/yr is on the high end for a VP.
Unless they're counting stock gains. In which case that could easily be a SWE. Netflix lets you choose your stock/cash ratio in your comp, and if you went stock heavy you could be at $3M a year if you've been there a while.
Usually if you're making that much, you're fairly mid to late career. That means you probably have kids. Which means you probably want a house in an area with good schools.
That house will cost $2M at least if you want to be near the office, which means, assuming you can collect the $400,000 down payment, will leave with a mortgage/tax/insurance payment of about $9,000 a month, or $108,000 a year. The tax man will also take about 1/2 of your earnings.
That leaves you with less than $200,000 a year. You'll spend probably at least $50,000 on food, clothes, activities, etc for the kids and yourself.
So now you're saving $150,000 a year, if you're super frugal.
Let's assume you're ok with retiring out of the Bay Area. You'll still need a couple million to retire on. At that rate, it will still take you decade to do it.
All that being said, I have a friend who did exactly that. He worked as a senior/principal engineer for about a decade, was single the whole time, lived super frugal, and retired back to Kansas. I hear he just sits at home working on open source, going to the bars every night.
a large amount of this is taxed away. California's top tax bracket is an additional 13.3% per year. High cost of living here also. Although I generally agree with your sentiment, it may not work out to as much money as you think in the end.
Now, if they opted into the ESPP and stock options programs with a $1M TC, remember NFLX has 5-6X'd in the last 3 years. Someone who allocated a lot of their TC towards equity could easily be making $3M/yr today.