[decafninja]

While there is cost of living differences per region in compensation too, I imagine the typical senior+ software engineer in the US is lucky to retire after decades of work having broken $200k-250k total compensation. Meanwhile junior FAANG engineers are probably making that much.

I'd say this applies to HCOL areas too like NYC or even the SFBA. If you're working for a cludgy old Fortune 500 tech-is-a-cost-center enterprise company (where the majority of SWEs are working), you're probably not making more than $200k-250k at best as a senior SWE with many, many years of experience unless you have some niche specialty.

[claytonjy]

To put a point on this, I saw an opening for a Chief Data Engineer (or something like that) at Ford. I asked my friend, a long tenured mechanical engineer there with friends on the software side, what that would pay...he said 200k! I bet it's closer to 300, but still, it's no wonder everyone hates their car software.