FAANG engineers are also massively over paid, compared to your average software engineer in any random country.
When people on HN discuses salaries, or I see a job posting from a Silicon Valley company I can't help think that we don't even pay our CTO that much. Frequently you could get two developers for the same price here in Denmark.
Those companies have one heck of a combined market position and it is all built with software. I would say their software engineers are paid more but I doubt that "overpaid" applies.
Think about what your CTO could do in that setting and realize that he's probably worth more to FAANG shareholders than to you hence the salary differential.
> Medicine has been more poorly paid than FAANG software engineering in the last two places I've lived (South Africa, Australia)
Interesting. I'm in South Africa, right now. The largest offer for a senior C# dev *right now* on www.pnet.co.za is R960k/a.
Twelve years ago, the GP that I was dating, who worked in a *state hospital* (i.e. not making as much as she could have in private practice) was making more than that.
I don't believe that doctors' salaries over the last 12 years have effectively been lowered. OTOH, if you know of places where they are offering more than R1.8m/a for senior developers, then by all means give me their contact details.
Happy to refer you to AWS! I was making over 1m rand (TC) as a mid level non dev position. I had friends in development making above the number you're talking.
When people on HN discuses salaries, or I see a job posting from a Silicon Valley company I can't help think that we don't even pay our CTO that much. Frequently you could get two developers for the same price here in Denmark.