I agree there is variability. I don't think equity is really a high percent for most tech jobs though. The big companies do it, the startups do it, but the mid size companies don't seem to. Most private companies (that aren't startups) don't seem to either.

Also, $600k-1M seems insane to me. Those can't be more than a fraction of 1% of the tech market.

That's only true in US though. Being paid in options/shares in Europe is pretty rare(not unheard of, but rare - and even then we're talking like €20k of shares that mature in 4 years, not hundreds of thousands)