There are literally hundreds of developers in FAANG companies putting down payments a lot more than 200k in the Bay Area. The median compensation including RSUs is over 400k. If you're in a critical org your RSUs can be an order of magnitude more than that.

Considering the salary offered by FAANG and other big tech companies, saving 200k$ is very doable. Yes some people are in credit card debts, and that proportion is higher than it should, but saving that amount of money is not unheard of. Most people just spend all they have (and a little more), which leads to not having that kind of savings.

Doing so in just 4 years may be harder (again, depends on your spending), but if you have a little nest before then I don't see what's so strange about it.

If his total comp was $300k, which is normal for a senior google dev, it's entirely possible to save $100k per year, even if the rent is $3.5k/mo.

Yeah it is except tech workers in the Bay Area working at FAANGs are nowhere close to average Americans. Senior engineer (5+ years, some leadership, even technical leadership) total comps range from $250-600k plus insane benefits a year at those companies, managers make more. Most FAANGs pay for everything you could want, your only expense paid out of your earnings could be your rent. Those are starting too, excluding refresher grants and assuming zero appreciation over 4 years in the equity.

My Google pay and rsus were definitely enough to buy a house, just not in the Bay area. A coworker who couldnt buy in santa Clara did a transfer to Ann arbor and was able to buy a massive home in the country.

That is correct, this is fairly typical compensation for the OP's level.

That was my signing bonus, nevermind pay or RSUs. It's not hard to acquire that much money.

>It's not hard to acquire that much money.

As a privileged developer, this is an extremely untrue and privileged statement. Developers like myself who don't live in SF are lucky to receive any signing bonus, and would be lucky to earn half of that as a yearly salary. Outside the US it's not possible. You are part of a very small and very fortunate group.

Source: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#salary

The original question is: "ex-FAANG developers...".

In that context, it's definitely priviledged but far from being extremely untrue.