Some executives are being paid between 2.5M and 1B, says someone with basic knowledge of the labor market.

The article is someone looking at levels.fyi.

OP trying to stoke them class divisions between the almost middle class and the sort of middle class. Damn them for almost making enough to afford somewhat desirable real-estate.

The policy failures of the "free market" (and the corrupt tax and political systems) are the ~2k billionaires vs. the declining real purchasing power of those at the midpoint and below over the past 70-80 years.

Employees who make $400k+/yr have insane time and performance expectation demands. There are many employees who will not take the next IC level because they have families (time constraints) and/or don't want the stress.

I work at megacorp MAANG where not everyone can afford baller real estate despite being Sr. SWE/SRE/PE/etc. I currently cannot. The past year, the buyers in the local real estate market were throwing ~20-40% over list because there was virtually no supply.

Lots of engineers. 250k is my base starting point to even have an employment conversation and I’m no 10x unicorn.

I can’t get companies to not find anything above $160k-$180k as jarring.

In my experience if you ask for $200k, you better be ready to do lots of on call, mentoring, hop on any call asked of you anytime, never have conflict with anybody, be super easy for managers to get along with (just shut up and say yes and do it no questions asked)

Kind of not worth it.

Thing is, he most likely lives in CA.

9-5, no weekends, no on call.

Yup, but salary is usually under $250k (my last salary was $179k). Most of that is stock.

How does that work? Do you get yearly RSUs?

Often monthly

Often a 1 year cliff, then quarterly or monthly.

Most of the US tech hub engineers are being paid between ...

I feel like there's a hard split between California software developer compensation (sometimes) and the rest of the country.

I'd be curious to see an actual disciplined distribution of software developer salaries, with and without salary data from California.

I feel like there is a staggering difference between the two as someone who works closely with professionals who collect this data regularly.

Specifically within California, the cost of living for things like housing is sky high if you live local to SF or SV. I live in a lcol and own a home, but home ownership with my same salary would be impossible in a HCOL area. I would easily pay 3-4x as much for the same amount of property. To relocate and keep the same standard of living, my salary would need to effectively 1.5-1.7x just to offset the costs of a higher mortgage payment. And renting in an average apartment in the area would cost at least much as my current mortgage.

It's not quite fair to compare project day rates vs straight salary but I know one Lead/Principal control system engineer who worked on FPSOs. Pre-2014, he was making 90k a month when he was offshore. His offshore day rate was significantly higher than his onshore rate.

Lots of travelling to and from manufacturers doing factory acceptance tests for equipment packages that go on the ships. You then live near the shipyard (Korea, Singapore, Brazil, Vietnam, etc.) while the FPSO is being built. You then leave with the ship and start commissioning everything.

All of the other guys I know on offshore rigs don't make as much as the example above but they'd be over 200-300k out of Houston or elsewhere on the gulf coast.