I’m a software engineer, live in an area with a way lower cost of living than the Bay Area, work for a company almost exactly the same size, and $191k would be a significant pay cut for me. It really isn’t a lot depending on your role, level of experience, etc, and that’s extra true for the Bay Area.
You're an extreme outlier, then. Most Bay Area software salaries are going to cap out around $190k - $230k range, except at FAANG or FAANG-like companies.
The median Bay Area salary for all levels is about 230k, so closer to the top of your suggested range. 190k would be a 20% lower than median pay, so definitely lower than usual for sure.
This is roughly the Senior (5-10 YOE) salary range at Bay Area startups post-Series A.
Staff-level or higher starts at around $230K and occasionally reaches $275K.
The salary data comes from researching roughly 250 Bay Area startups. I'm personally defining startups as some combination of: Series A - D, founded post-2015, less than 100 Engineers.
I don’t think this is accurate (and it is not in my experience)
levels.fyi puts the median salary for _juniors_ at 180k and the 90th percentile at 230k. The data is obviously imperfect but on average it’s fairly accurate. My personal experience also aligns with this.
Senior is around 300-500k and Staff/Manager can get extremely silly.
Not a lot for total compensation for a software engineer with non-zero tenure in the bay area. For a point of comparison an SFPD officer starts at 105k and gets up to 145k before overtime and this is pretty average in the bay.