I believe Salesforce offered interns in SF something like $8600+/mo and an option of company-provided housing or an $8k stipend, if they took the latter then their effective pay would be a bit over $11k/mo. So yeah, it doesn't sound unreasonable. Internships only lasted 3 months, so it's not a big burden on the company, plus it gives the intern a salary proxy for what they can expect as minimum if they're invited back for full time the next summer after graduation.

No way, I get more than that at an entry position outside of FANG. Senior software engineer pay starts at $25k/month and goes up from there.

Edit: I just noticed base pay–then yes, that's about what it'd be, but base pay tends to cap out very quickly so it's not a good measure of compensation.

I moved to the bay area at the same time as taking a senior engineering role for an Eastern European startup on $100k - feel like I missed a trick lol :P

To be fair I don't care about salaries as much as half of HN appear to, I'm quite comfortable on that with a wife on a postdocs wage too.