Compared to FANG companies not realy

FANGs defeat themselves by putting themselves in COL areas that are really high thus reducing their relative compensation to 1/3 or less, even with all that stock. That's pretty easy for govt to beat.

As opposed to the col in the areas the government is in? Don't forget the limits of civil service pay oh and regular sequesters and budget cuts and reductions in the value of DB pensions.

CoL and benefits need to be figured into your assertion

Yes right trouble is this is often used by hr to try and explain why they don't pay market rate.

Doesn't really explain why google pays less in London UK for that google does in low col states in the states.

And I don't think Lockheed and BAE pay their engineers as much as FANG companies do and they certainly don't out compete on benefits.

Exactly right. Somehow people keep explaining high salaries of FANG in terms of cities/area in US. Truth is more likely that these companies have immense market cap and profitability and being helmed by first generation liberal entrepreneurs they are happy with sharing benefits.

IBM, Cisco or any other typical IT company pays 120-150K salaries in bay area and not much of profit sharing/ equity.