90 or 100 seems small in comparison to the number of tech workers in SF making that kind of cash

Most of that is equity comp for engineers.

For government you have to factor in job security, generous pension and benefits, and guaranteed annual pay raises.

Engineers have none of those things.

Not small if you consider total govt. employees in SF.

The link that showed the 90 employees making $300K or over is a link to a page about San Francisco city employees specifically, and says there's 40,951 total. (And it is 90 exactly according to that page.) So is 0.2% of workers earning that much a lot compared to tech companies, do you think?

How about employees making $200K or over? That's 1790, or just about 4%. $100K or over? 15997 employees, or around 39%. So over 60% of SF city employees make under $100K. The median salary, in fact, is just under $86K.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that's lower than Facebook's median salary.

Pension, overtime, benefits, job security.

According to this website the single highest paid person in SF was a sole police officer making 1/2 million? https://i.imgur.com/8uj2HBU.png

Overtime pay. There was a story about a BART janitor who made $250K or so in a year with overtime.

Correct, every cop I know is loaded due to overtime pay. You'd think it'd make more sense just to hire more cops out the agency, but then that cuts into everyone's earnings which discourages them from acting financially responsible.

It's actually from a settlement that resulted in him getting several years of backpay at once.

police offer making > 500k ???

These systems are amazing. The rules are different everywhere, people game the systems, and the leadership is in on the game.

My anecdata is from a different police force elsewhere in the country. There, your pension is based on the average of your last 2 years of service. When you reach retirement age, it is orchestrated for you to get a promotion and as much overtime (at time and a half) as you're able to work. So people double or triple their last years' salary and then retire making more than they legitimately made before the scheme. Millions and millions of dollars are stolen from the people just through this one law enforcement pension program.

Wow that is egregious. I've known professors whose pensions were 70% of the average of their best 4 years.