I think this is due to the self-reported nature of Glassdoor, and it exposes how this is a flawed methodology. The original point of salary disparity still stands, but any single datapoint here is likely not reliable.

That could be a 'translation' issue. In some companies 'staff engineer' is top elite. Where as in other companies it is entry level. Could be something similar?

Maybe because someone just pulled the numbers out of his ass?

I assume because their data source is not great (aggregation of some kind of Glassdoor data).

* Looking at data for Google in San Francisco, Glassdoor says that average total compensation for a "Senior Software Engineer" is 230K $, whereas levels.fyi (which I trust a bit more) says that Level 5 (the one labeled "Senior SWE") earns 350K $ on average. Interestingly, Glassdoor also offers a breakdown of total compensation into the components. Adding the average value of the components together also results in something around 350K $ ... I guess Glassdoor just aggregates things in a wrong way. * People at different stages of their career probably have a very different likelihood to create a Glassdoor account (let alone one that accurately names their salary). Similar with small vs. large companies, European vs. American companies etc. This potentially introduces enough bias to make the whole thing worthless for jobs that have a large variance in salaries (such as "director of engineering"). * I still assume that the general thrust of the article is right (when starting your software eng career, the bay area is not a bad place to be). But I wouldn't trust the salary numbers very much.

Probably not enough data points.

came here to see if anyone else caught it