[jedberg]

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.

[ecmascript]

If I were to make $600k I would only have to work about 1-3 years then I could live of my savings for the rest of my life with my current expenses.

I don't get how people in SV can make this much and not be financially set after a few years of working.

[jedberg]

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.

[chrisjarvis]

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.