[mushbino]

At a FAANG, a Product Design IC can make up to around $350k/yr. A SWE can regularly make $1M/yr. My BiL is an eng manager and he makes a little over that. One thing I've noticed is that most engineers seem to be relatively happy and stay at places longer. Most designers seem to be miserable.

Just my 2¢, but having hard, understood metrics can be easier in many ways vs much more nebulous things that can be hard to quantify. That kind of turns into more of a popularity contest.