[leetcrew]

that seems about right, but I don't understand your point. it doesn't really "cost" a publicly traded company less to pay employees in stock vs cash. instead of paying $x + y shares, they could just sell their own shares periodically and pay all cash. they might lower TCs a little to offset the risk of additional dollar-denominated expenses in down years, but they would still be paying way above market.

[alephnerd]

FAANGs are outlier stocks, hence why the acronym was made. Plus it's an ancient acronym that ignores plenty of well paying employers in the area (Crowdstrike, Zscaler, PANW, Broadcom, etc).

And FAANGs did well depending on when you joined. In most cases in the past several years it's kind of did the same as peers depending on how long your stint was.

There are a lot of publicly listed employers in the Bay Area who's stock is doing very well, but limiting prestige to FAANG is career limiting and clearly stems from hubris.

[leetcrew]

right, I didn't really mean to debate what companies are inside/outside the Big N club (or whatever you want to call them). I agree with your overall point that Big N salaries are not representative of what a typical tech worker can expect to make.

the part I don't get is why you chose to emphasize that google base+bonus is about the same as those other companies. I don't know the google particulars, but I'd guess stock makes up almost half the target comp of someone at that level. that's a big difference even if the stock stays totally flat.

I'm not familiar with the google particulars, but I don't find stock comp to be much different than a quarterly bonus. there are some good and bad years, but the way refreshers and promos are handled cause actual comp to converge to 10-20% above target in the long run, even if the stock grows spectacularly during your tenure.