[theandrewbailey]

400K total compensation doesn't sound out of line for a particularly niche senior dev/software architect in California.

[filoleg]

Or just a random senior dev at a FAANG. Can't speak for all of them, but that's definitely not uncommon at Meta/Google. And you are certainly gonna shoot above that number at L6.

[saagarjha]

If you’re at Google you should be approaching that number at L5, really.

[filoleg]

Yep, agreed, that's definitely very doable at L5. I just decided to be a bit conservative with my estimate by looking at levels.fyi first, because I expected someone in replies to bring it up as a counterargument.