How do you get to that level of compensation? Are you just referring to "luck" with stock or cash salary? If it's not stock what skills pay that much?

You don't. It's kind of a "HN trope" that the typical Silicon Valley engineer makes that much in total comp. Everyone on HN seems to know that one guy who's brother's nephew's roommate works at Google and makes $400K, but it is a far, far, FAR outlier in terms of total comp for a mid-senior level engineer at a mid-tier company.

There seems to be ample [1] data [2] about [3] this.

1: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-senior-soft...

2: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Senior_Software_Engi...

3: http://www1.salary.com/CA/San-Francisco/Software-Engineer-II...

Staff engineer at Google, most likely, but possibly Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft.

In any case, somebody who thinks this represents a significant slice of the Silicon Valley workforce is living in a bubble. For every engineer making >$500k, there are many thousands making <$200k, at the thousands of other tech companies in the Bay Area that aren't Google/Amazon/Facebook/Apple. While the $500k engineer has every incentive to stay in SV, that has no bearing on the vast majority of engineers.

I have seen offers or been given exact numbers from 3 of the 4 companies in your list at the "staff engineer" level or equivalent ("principal" at both amazon and microsoft), and they are nowhere near $500k/year.

I have heard that at FB and Google, a very small percentage of engineers got special stock awards a couple years ago that could put them in that range. But most top performers at these places at the senior/staff level are more in the 175-350 range.

Other than that, the only engineers making that kind of money got lucky in a startup lottery.

I wouldn't rule out $500k for Google. It's not a super reliable source, but Glassdoor lists the average total compensation for a Google staff engineer at $420k.

I doubt Apple, Amazon, or even Facebook pay that much on any regular basis, but I wouldn't rule out someone getting an outsized offer during a machine learning (or other flavor of the month) hiring frenzy.

[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Staff-Software-Engin...

It's also a very small subset of people that get those style offers. Every CS student I talk to thinks they're going to make the google prime salary, when the reality is they're not likely to make the cut as an average developer let alone the "silicon valley rock star". It's really a dis-service to the reality for most entry level and young developers. Additionally these crazy bootcamps aren't helping with their take a 12 week class get a job at google stories.

I know senior engineers making more than that because of 1 year pre ipo equity, but my understanding is senior engineers at google and facebook are more in the 300k-400k range with base/bonus/rsu. I am also curious how common it is to get to 500k total comp, and how one would go about that. It sounds like an outlier, unless you are an executive.

If you are mostly just saving that money, perhaps to later do early retirement in a place like Tennessee or Kentucky, sure. Cost of living doesn't impact you much when you live in a tiny apartment.

If you want to raise a big family, you're better off elsewhere. Even with a really reduced total comp, say ~300k, you could have a 6-bedroom house on the beach or on a 30-acre lot. You could have a guest house and servant's quarters.

My plan is for sure to retire somewhere cheaper, but life sometimes have it's own plans.

You don't need anywhere near $500k in SF to have more disposable income than most other places. That is, if you don't have any dependents. Things like food, entertainment, and rent are high in SF, but on average software engineer salaries I still think you'll come out ahead of most other places until you have to start paying for child care, education, etc.