I am sorry you are 'disturbed' by my skepticism of random people on the internet, but I don't have friends working at FAANG so all I have to go off is my own experience and publicly available info. Based on those, I find it hard to believe how many people here post that they make 500k+.
AppAmaGooBookSoft do, indeed, pay deep into the six figures. Each of them has an engineering ladder, where promotions start off like promotions in grade school. If you're not fired, you make it to level X. (They don't fire many people.) The offer at X is, depending on negotiation skill, phases of the moon, perceived competition (particularly on the initial offer stage), and slight variations in performance, about $450k.
There are promotions available after X. People get them, approximately daily.
There are many people for whom it is not in their interest to tell you this, because it will make their offers or proposed life plans less attractive by comparison. There are many HNers who prefer ignoring reality on this issue, sometimes out of jealousy, sometimes out of pride, or sometimes out of believing that they can reason from first principles what Google should pay a Senior Software Engineer and therefore ignore what Google does pay a Senior Software Engineer.
These people are wrong. The market prints the deals where the market prints the deals.
For many good devs, immigrating to the USA is close to impossible in these times. Would be nice to know if these kinds of salaries are attainable outside the states.
Some places will try to pay you less based on your location. You can't blame them for trying, but you don't have to accept their first offer, either. The market is really good now.
You’ll quickly discover that either those compensations are real and very common considering how many posters are there, or the app is literally full of trolls pretending to have those offers and ask tips to other trolls, for whatever reason (except that they need to have a valid FAANG email account to post, so go figure why they would lie).
And there are many other resources to vet those numbers, such as http://levels.fyi or advice from “trusted” folks in the software community like patio11: https://mobile.twitter.com/patio11/status/100632191192687001...
As to why I am disturbed: people who don’t believe average software engineers can make that much are the reason why many employers don’t pay that much, so they drive down the overall compensation in the industry. If all software engineers were more aware of their market value, there would be less discrepancy in compensation, such as in other mature fields (e.g. doctors, lawyers). So, the fact you don’t believe me it’s disturbing because it’s directly affecting the job market I’m in.
That said, would love if someone made a site dedicated to collecting these offer letters. Would certainly help next time I'm job hunting.