Has this actually been verified? I haven't happened on any stories yet about someone "doing their time" at google to go pick a job making way above their normal range.
I've been recruited to positions specifically because of D. E. Shaw on my resume/LinkedIn profile. Whether that got me way above range or not is impossible to say, of course, but I've never been one to complain about salary in my life either. At my current company, I took a significant pay cut to come here in 2003, N years pre-IPO. N turned out to be 2.5.