> If your desired comp number actually is $1M/year, will that just flag you as a joke to Triplebyte companies? With post-pandemic stock price increases a lot of engineers at FAANGs are making more than that now.

For any reasonable definition of "a lot", no they absolutely are not. A lot of people with 2+ years of experience who've either been promoted once and received a strong annual review, or switched jobs as a mid-level industry hire are making in the 200s and 300s, a few pushing into the 400s. Much more than that and you're looking at the top 1% (or less) of engineers at the top companies. Not a lot.

Source: was a mid level engineer at a FAANG until I left late last year, knew seniors and principals and their comp. Nobody was making $1M/year.

> Nobody was making $1M/year.

Nobody that makes 2x what their coworkers do at the same job/level casually discloses their comp at the water cooler.

I can guarantee people at my company and level make 3-4x more than me. Push into the next level and you have quite a few $1M+ TC

If "quite a few" non-directors make more than average American cardiologists either:

A) your company is engaged in disturbing monopolism; B) your company is engaged in disturbing labor exploitation and arbitrage; or C) your company is engaged in disturbing environmental destruction.

Would love to be proven wrong. Am I?

Edit: option D) is that American cardiologists are not as exclusive and skilled a labor force as I would prefer to believe ;)

Your whole mental model of how businesses make profit is based on a comparison to cardiologists?

People are paid to create value. If they work at a company that reaches a billion people, then writing some software that adds $0.1 revenue per user per year is worth a lot.

*value to the __economy__, not to be confused with value to society.

But people do brag about it on Blind such that the compensation bands are well known. People also complain about cliffs when it turns out the company didn't want to pay them at a certain level.

You'd be surprised

Someone has not worked on wall street

Stock price for most of the FAANGs has gone up by about 2.5x in the last year. If you had $200K base, $50K bonus, and $300K stock compensation in 2019, you're now making $1M today. That's roughly L6/E6/ICT6 (staff) level.

Google has not even hit 2x. https://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=GOOGL

Also, staff level is a tiny slice of the engineers at FAANG. So still not “a lot” even if your stock appreciation numbers were correct.

Which FAANG has had their stock go up 150%?

They’re all doing well, but even Amazon hasn’t doubled their stock since prepandemic.

There are definitely more people making 1m/yr at FAANGs than their were last year, but I agree with others that it’s not “a lot.”

FB in May 2019 = $177.47, today = $332.04, 87% appreciation.

AMZN in May 2019 = $1775, today = $3496, 96% appreciation.

AAPL in May 2019 = $43.77, today = $130.87, 198% appreciation.

GOOG in May 2019 = $1103, today = $2508, 127% appreciation.

That's all over the last 2 years. Market low was apparently Dec 2018, before the Fed started cutting interest rates, so the numbers are a bit bigger since then. They were pretty steady through 2017-2019, so anyone who got grants or refreshers during those time periods has benefitted from that appreciation.

They are making that on their 3-4 years vesting and refreshers etc that they can't sell. So yes, in past few years some folks have been making great to really great money especially if they have a bunch of equity in various vesting stages + get a big refresh / bump on a position switch to drive retention. I wouldn't say a lot but many maybe?

if your desired comp is $1M, i doubt triplebyte is the route to it. you would need to use your network.