Glassdoor.com gives figures of less than half of those values for "senior software engineers".

There are many cities in the US where you could comfortably live on $35k and get paid $135k as an engineer.

Glassdoor reports salary and not full comp. Facebook and Google are a lot of stock-based comp. $150k salary at Google is often combined with $200k/year in Google RSUs for a senior engineer who has been there for 5 years.

I find it amusing that every time I bring these numbers up, I get people telling me I'm wrong. I'm not making these up. There are people I know making those salaries. There have been countless people here who have talked about how they make that much. This isn't a secret.

Living on $35k and making $135k doesn't mean you'll bank $100k/yr. Taxes cut into it. Living on $150k and making $350k does. And if you're smart you can live on $80k/yr in the bay area. I even know people living on $35k/yr out here.

Not everyone gets the high paying Google job. Not everyone wants it. But it exists and it pays extremely well.

And in those cities, your housing is a smaller percentage of your disposable income than it is in Silicon Valley, but everything else, e.g. cars, phones, laptops, furniture, food, is a larger percentage.

You also neglect stock purchase plans and RSUs, which are the majority of many engineers' compensation. You could make $160k per year at Apple or Google and get $200k of stock every year as well.