> Sites like what you share are often going to be representative of the upper band of the salary range since that's who self-reports
Many people have corroborated that levels.fyi is accurate for large tech companies like Amazon and Google. It's accurate for my company as well.
If FAANG comp is middle class, at what point does it become upper middle/upper class? I believe ~$500k is 1% income in the US. Some SWEs who are "workers" break that. Is someone who has top 1% income really middle class?
A lot of SWEs also receive equity compensation (I.e. ownership), which is very much not a middle class phenomenon.
The point is that salaries should have increased for everyone. Middle class is not struggling to make ends meet and living paycheck to paycheck. It is living a modest life with modest savings and a discretionary income.
This random article claims the 90th percentile in the Bay Area is $384K. https://www.kqed.org/news/11799308/bay-area-has-highest-inco...
I am not sure how that helps make this clearer though. It almost doesn’t matter at this point. We all know making $55K/yr in the Bay Area is rough. People are getting screwed over.
My argument has always been that they exist in the middle class. The fact that median income being low isn't indicative of them not being middle class, but rather that the continued squeeze on salary among all middle class workers has resulted in a shrinking of who actually is middle class and what that income means.