Even an E5 can become a millionaire pretty quickly. You can definitely save around 100k/yr at that income and with a 6% return (very reasonable) that ends up giving you $4m after 20 years or $8m after 30 years. So you will end up quite well off in retirement.
You don't need to make 1M a year to become a millionaire. Becoming millionaire doesn't mean having a 1M paycheck a year. You can get there in a couple of years with 0.X * 1M paychecks. For example can be E5 for 5 years at 350K/year, and that gets you there too.
And there's not several hundreds E5s or equivalent, there's thousands+ of them.
$350k paycheck takes a fair amount of time to make a millionaire. You could be paying $72k/year in rent and $130k/year in taxes. If transit food and other expenses are $25k/year you pretty much need an 8 year run to save $1Mil.
I’m also not sure $1M should be the standard for making people rich when the typical house where they live is $1.8M-$2.5M
Sure but most of tech companies have regional income adjustments and generally speaking your income adjusts in proportion to cost of living. Usually that means its worth living in a high cost of living area because your savings also scale. If you get $220k in rural montana instead of $350k in SF I don't think you come out ahead.
Right. When I worked for Facebook in Boston my partner and I each paid $1500/month for a 2/1 in Cambridge. In-unit dishwasher but coin-op laundry in the basement. I also drove a 10-year-old Nissan.
Maintaining a (grad_student)++ standard of living while working at big tech means your savings go up fast.
Alas, my current monthly mortgage is certainly not $1500.