Even with 10-20 years of experience in the bay area at small, medium, large size software companies, I've never ever made anything close to that amount.
Hitting 400k total comp if you have the right experience (5-10 years, good brand university or companies) is totally doable.
There's a huge amount of variance, within FAANG and elsewhere.
As a simple example, SDE III at Amazon typically pays a bit more than $300k. Principal SDE, the next rank above that, will pay well over $400k.
And don't forget that during years of steep stock appreciation, like much of the past decade, actual compensation will often be higher than that.
There's your problem.
Getting paid in options is the exact mistake I've warned about repeatedly in comments throughout this thread.
Yours is a fairly common case in SV: worked in a series of startups that "paid" you in illiquid options that ended up being totally worthless.
I'm willing to bet these very same startups encouraged you to value these options very highly: high 6 and even 7 figures, right?
These places don't pay well, because why should they? Talent is apparently willing to work their ass off for these "worthless options" that are sold to them as vouchers for surefire multi-million-dollar jackpots.
Also bonus closer to 15-20%.
400k for senior is pretty good, but still doable at a lot of the big companies.
I make over 300 and I'm not senior yet.
GP has replied elsewhere that all his employers were startups that paid him in "worthless options".
Indeed, you won't ever see $400k or even $300k working for startups that "pay" you in illiquid 0.001% stakes in what will surely become a multi-billion dollar runaway success (in which unlikely case your share will be diluted to nothing anyway).
You can certainly stick your fingers in your ears and sing LALALA while the rest of us make real money,. Your life, your choice.
Experience and fast career progression shouldn’t be overlooked when looking at startups.
The exec in charge was fired, and a lot of their key staff had already jumped ship by then.
The key points are:
1. Startup valuations are highly volatile. There were plenty of startups that were valued above the billion dollar levels, then sold for 8 or even 7 figures.
2. While profitable established companies can also go south, such companies pay you in cash and liquid RSUs, so if they spiral down you just switch to a better performing company. Getting most of your pay in illiquid options means you risk losing multiple years of earnings in the best part of your career.
Specifically, tons of talented people took a job in Zenefits based on the assumption that their illiquid shares will be worth six-seven figures, and likely will never see anything close to that in real money. Same thing wouldn't happen for those paid in liquid assets.
Only a handful of almost surefire unicorns can reasonably come anywhere near matching that, and that only in the eventuality that they don't pull a Zenefits and leave you hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars short and in need of a new job.
Anecdotally, last year I was contacted by such a surefire unicorn for a role that was actually very interesting. We crunched the numbers together, and the best case scenario was them effectively matching my current comp. Which was actually a great proposition for startup comp, the best I've seen. Still, nowhere near compelling enough to upend my life for a higher risk position without any financial upside.
I worked in startups for the early part of my career, including a fairly well known one that exited. Neither me, nor any of my colleagues in that startup, nor any of the many other startup employees in my network, ever made more than a few hundred thousands on our options. Many very talented engineers made nothing at all on large quantities of options granted by several promising startups.
It's no wonder that none of the recent graduates I interview nowadays is at all interested in startups. When I ask where else they are interviewing, it's always FAANG and other high-flying profitable businesses. Even more so for senior engineers, whose opportunity cost is even higher, typically in the hundreds of thousands per year.