I can say as a hiring manager, engineer, and friend of recruiters -- these salaries are a little low compared to top tier tech companies at every level, at least for developers. By top tier here I mean Google, Facebook, etc.

They're not horribly low, and they're probably in range for 2nd-tier companies that you'd recognize but that I don't want to name because I don't have recent salary data for them.

Honestly I think they're fair, although I personally would end up having to ask what counts as living in SF, because if you tell me I don't live in SF because I'm 20 minutes outside the city, I would agree until I found out it lowered my salary by 15% (or w/e the percentage is). :)

I believe you 100%. You're comparing top tier companies to 2nd tier companies though. Stack Overflow is a second tier company. I mean that in terms of size and wealth level, not in terms of quality, obviously.

Google et al pays WAY above market compared to smaller tech companies. whenever these threads come up there's a lot of cognitive dissonance that goes on. a lot of Googlers or Facebookers will come in and say "WTF this is waaaaay too low" and they don't even realize how inflated their own salaries are compared to most of the rest of the world. they should be thankful for the largesse of their employer and get some perspective.

Its not that they don't realize. It is that they don't want to accept they would be paid less at some other companies.