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.