[eropple]

This is pretty overblown, I think. I have with intention avoided working for very large companies for most of my career and have a nice house in a major urban area. I save plenty of money and am reasonably likely to retire (defined as "do work I want to, when I want to, for play money etc.") before I'm 55.

If $200K/year at senior/principal isn't "sustainable"--well, move out of the SFBA, I guess.

[zeroonetwothree]

Not everyone has the flexibility to move wherever they want. I have family obligations in SFBA so I’m kind of stuck. Not that it’s super bad but I dream of saving 2x as much by moving somewhere cheaper.

[eropple]

I absolutely have a lot more empathy for locals than I do for the yearly influx, yeah.

[grugagag]

There are startups and startups. Your compensation is not bad at all. I was talking about startups that do this scammy thing mentioned in the thread.

[eropple]

That's the thing, though. Everyone knows equity value has decreased and salaries have generally increased to reflect it. Within some error bars, $200K is a pretty representative one amongst folks I know who are working for startups in a senior/principal role.

There was much more of a delta when I started doing this ~10 years ago, but even then few people were in a hard spot (again, SFBA types maybe excluded, get another two roommates I guess).