$200K would be a high salary, meaning a fixed cash payment someone receives on a periodic basis (with $200K being the yearly sum). However, as the value of total compensation, meaning cash salary plus stock plans, retirement plans, the value of healthcare insurance, expected bonuses, etc., then yes I agree it's pretty normal. Indeed, the starting total compensation of college graduates at top tech companies like AmaGooBookSoft is apparently around $175K (see web search results for "What is the salary for graduates starting at <company X>?").

One Quora article claims that the average compensation of tech employees at these companies is above $200K. This is partly why areas that employ many tech workers are facing housing price crises: after covering their costs of living, the surplus compensation often goes into housing. Since housing is seen as "safe" and as a form of investment, it can soak up considerable amounts of surplus income, and since there's only so much of it in a given area, the competition for housing is intense.

I'd say $200k is very typical (if not on the low end) of salary + stock for big companies. Not including other things like insurance or retirement plans which are hard to attach a quantifiable dollar amount to.

In terms of straight dollars, you can easily earn $200k+/yr doing contracting.

Do you have a source for this? Or can people chime in? I could see this for Google or FB which are known to pay pretty well, but is this really "typical"? And even for Google or FB, I imagine $200k would require that you include annual bonuses too.

> In terms of straight dollars, you can easily earn $200k+/yr doing contracting.

But.. is contracting really ever easy? I mean it's hard work getting clients and how many people are qualified enough?

I can vouch for the 200k number, I was earning slightly lower than that 4 years into the industry (before I left to work at a place where the RSUs are worthless before IPO). It wasn't anywhere near Google/FB level.

But I disagree that there are many options to save on tax, etc though. I wasn't too bad, but there was no way I could've saved 50% of that (esp if not locked away like 401k). Just my rent for 1 bed in a average apartment was >50k a year.