There exist tens of thousands of engineers at AppAmaGooBookSoft who have pay packages which top $300k. There exist thousands whose pay package approaches $1 million. These are facts about the world you live in.
I urge HNers to incorporate these facts about the world you live in into your career plans, including e.g. a pre-commitment to negotiate all job offers consistent with the knowledge that this is what the market is paying.
You need to get out of the salary game and work for yourself or do consultantcy if you want big bucks
It is possible to beat AppAmaGooBookSoft while working for oneself or running a consultancy. It takes a bit of doing, and isn't quite as straightforward as "get job; execute well at core job function; try to get assigned to really good projects."
Google has hired many industry luminaries that they want on payroll at least as much for their own PR as for the work those people actually perform; it's almost like an athletic sponsorship that way. I'm sure some of those guys make 500K-1000K from their "employers". In that sense, even if you're an employee, you still have to go out there and do something special and noteworthy to raise yourself to the level of a "programmer" that makes 500k+.
I don't think you can demand more than 170K-200K in a moderate COL area (plus or minus as appropriate for COL adjustments) for being a normal salaried programmer, and you'd have to be quite good to get that.
This. Trading time for money does not scale. To belabor the analogy, vertical scaling (e.g. getting higher and higher positions in a company, climbing the ladder, high-end office politics) as opposed to horizontal scaling (multiple income streams, multiple revenue-generating disciplines, building your network) gives you no ownership.
This also helps develop cultural norms like e.g. "We're here to organize the world's information. It is Ungoogley to collect a spreadsheet about Googler salaries. That information should never be organized... by you, that is."
The averages being, in my area: SDE £61,668 SDE III £64,190 Senior SDE £84,307
Were you invited to pen test? Did you offer your initial service for "free" to prove your worth?
I am far less stressed from the dev shop days, but 80h/w still happens at times when projects go long and another kicks off. I travel 1-2 weeks month (sometimes 3) though that's an unavoidable fact of life no matter which path I take.
This is not universally true, but you're correct that merely accepting an advertised programming job expecting to move up to those levels naturally would be naive. One problem to overcome is the proliferation of irrelevant job titles... IIRC John Carmack kept the title of 'programmer' for quite a while.
or underwrite really expensive off-line options contract on paper that entitles investors to an equity that they can buy back at huge discounts, I'm talking 99.99% discount to acquire ridiculous amount of shares that will be worth a ton when they IPO or get bought someone else who thinks the equity is worth more in the future.