You "only" need $300k (give or take) to be in the top 1% of individual income.

Edit to add:

> Also 350-500k sounds about the right range for senior-ish at top large tech company as a software engineer.

Senior"-ish," implying some not-so-senior folks are making $350-500k a year is absolutely ridiculous. But even barring that, I know HN is home to many, many highly paid folks at large technical companies in SV making boatloads of money.

Most software dev jobs in the country top out in the $150-200k mark for non-managerial, senior high-level architectural type jobs. Very good senior devs in my area are $110-135. I've never personally seen a salary or heard someone claim they made anything higher than $185. Surely they exist but they're well above-market or have extremely specialized skills that make it borderline impossible to get any sort of "market rate" for.

It's just a cost of living thing. One calculator says,

> A salary of $185,000 in Boise, Idaho should increase to $450,797 in San Jose, California

https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/boise-id/san-jose-...

Total comp in the $200-300k range is common for seniors at tech companies in SV. But people tend to not understand exactly what that amount of money means here because it seems like so much money. It doesn't mean people in, say, Boise are underpaid or whatever, just that everything is way, way more expensive in the Bay Area.

Not everything. Housing and maybe some personal services.

Who is better able to afford to put his kids through college, go skiing every year in the Swiss Alps, buy a Ferrari, or retire in luxury in Florida--a guy who spent his career making $185,000 in Boise or making $450,000 in San Jose?

More money is still more money, the cost of housing notwithstanding.

I don't disagree that money is still money, as I do like my high bay area salary. It makes traveling, and my universally set priced items feel like pennies on the dollar.

However, I feel like you're are underestimating "some personal services". I don't have the time cook all my meals, I need to commute to get affordable housing, and I don't plan on just hanging out in the park everyday. So alas I find myself paying:

$15 for a simple saled

$11 roundtrip commute on caltrain

$100 for nosebleed seats to a band that was barely even considered famous during their heyday

These things really add up quick, and if you're not constantly careful about budgeting, you'll find yourself with less money than your counterpart in Boise.

Ok, you just spent $600 of your "high bay salary". How exactly are you planning to get down to $185k? Or you know, something more normal like $70k.

Americans and their ridiculous concept of what middle-class is, hilarious. You're rich, own it.

It costs about $3.5k/month to rent a two bed in the Bay Area, $1.2k/month per kid for the day care. Add in $1.2k for grocery, utlities, insurance, gas, car maintenance ..etc, and you are looking at around $7k a month with two kids. It would be closer to $9k with entertainment/vacation/car payments.

You are right that someone with 450k gross should be able to comfortably handle this. It is different story for the majority that make 250k or less.

At a similar lifestyle level, they’re probably close.

Most everything is indeed more expensive. Electricity, for example is nearly twice as expensive. I just looked up gas and Costco vs Costco is $.80/gal more. Insurance is more. Property tax rates are about the same but since the value of properties is so much higher you pay a lot more in real dollars. And since the basics are more expensive, everyone’s rates go up because they have to buy the basics too.

Do you or dmoy know of any publicly viewable data that supports such high comp packages being “normal” for average senior developers? Not anecdotes from highly paid HN readers. There are no doubt top people at outlier companies making that much but if you look at places like salary.com and glassdoor.com those figures are not average or median.

Think of average senior engineer Bob with a 10 year career, now working at mediocre tech company Xyz in Sunnyvale. There’s no way on Earth he’s making $300k.

Hot shot ML expert Alice working at Facebook? Sure!

How many more Bobs are there than Alices? 10x? 20x?

levels.fyi

Median(?avg?) senior comp at Google is apparently 350k, 370k at Facebook.

That is reasonable for large top tech company, which was the original statement.

The original claim was about a "range" of $350K to $500K, implying that $350K was the low end, not average or median. Which sounds highly doubtful, even at top tech companies, and totally unheard of at most average tech companies.

Ok sure, one level above senior, average is 480k+. That's still not that high level. Especially since people will routinely make senior with like 6-8 years of experience.

So based on this comment and the one you made a few levels up, it is "routine" for someone to graduate college, go to Google, and 6 years later (when they're 27-28 years old) be making $370,000 a year?

I feel you are moving the goalposts a bit, but yes, for people who got in to top large tech companies.

The original statement I made was 350-500 is about in line with senior-ish at top large tech companies.

The levels immediately below senior brush against that boundary (I made 350k one year when the stars aligned, and wasn't senior), and the levels immediately above are averaging at the very top of that limit.

If you disagree with the data, that's fine.

Edit: dropping random extra prepositions

I have no illusions that the current gravy train will stay forever, but for now...

In particular because more comp comes from stock, it's extremely sensitive to a market downturn.

In the US, an individual with 300K+ income is in the top 1%. A household with 430K+ income is in the top 1%.

Sources: -DQYDJ (https://dqydj.com/who-are-the-one-percent-united-states/) -CNN (https://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/index.html)

This is about individual employees leaving so the individual rate is most important; the source I had open (closed the tab) listed $300k for one year and $302k for the year after that as the benchmark for 99th percentile.

> 350-500k sounds about the right range for senior-ish at top large tech company as a software engineer.

holy hell. I am need to quit my job.

Is this really where software salaries have gone in the last few (2-4) years?? In the past month I have seen multiple comments or blog posts indicating compensation for senior engineers is nearly 500k.

Salary? No. Salary+bonus+stock? Yes.

In a word, yes. Though I can only definitely confirm it for Google and FB.