[fzeroracer]

A test engineer, a software engineer and a QA engineer all working at either Amazon, Amazon Games or Twitch are going to have often vastly different comp levels and often lower than what's reported on those sites from my experience. Since Washington now requires companies to post wage/salary range, you can simply look up job postings in that state to get an idea of how wide the band is. Sites like what you share are often going to be representative of the upper band of the salary range since that's who self-reports.

My argument has always been that they exist in the middle class. The fact that median income being low isn't indicative of them not being middle class, but rather that the continued squeeze on salary among all middle class workers has resulted in a shrinking of who actually is middle class and what that income means.

[rnk]

I'm sorry but your idea of what middle class is seems to be way out of wack with the reality that people face. Avg people make a lot less than the mentioned 190k, and if you make over 100k, you are close to being in the top 10% band of salary. If you make 200k are you definately in the top 10%. Most people make vastly less than software engineers. With avg salary around 55k, and that should be included in "middle class". Can you find some statistics or reports that backup your claim that "middle class" is so much higher?

[fsociety]

You are missing the point. “Middle class” lifestyle, especially in high cost areas, is not making around $55K. It is making roughly $150K or more.

The point is that salaries should have increased for everyone. Middle class is not struggling to make ends meet and living paycheck to paycheck. It is living a modest life with modest savings and a discretionary income.

This random article claims the 90th percentile in the Bay Area is $384K. https://www.kqed.org/news/11799308/bay-area-has-highest-inco...

I am not sure how that helps make this clearer though. It almost doesn’t matter at this point. We all know making $55K/yr in the Bay Area is rough. People are getting screwed over.

[ZephyrBlu]

SDET, SWE and QA are completely different roles so of course they have different comp. Twitch's comp seems very similar to Amazon's for SWEs though: https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Amazon,Twitch&track=Software....

> Sites like what you share are often going to be representative of the upper band of the salary range since that's who self-reports

Many people have corroborated that levels.fyi is accurate for large tech companies like Amazon and Google. It's accurate for my company as well.

If FAANG comp is middle class, at what point does it become upper middle/upper class? I believe ~$500k is 1% income in the US. Some SWEs who are "workers" break that. Is someone who has top 1% income really middle class?

A lot of SWEs also receive equity compensation (I.e. ownership), which is very much not a middle class phenomenon.