I'm not sure what the point of this comment is, but I believe there are many, many more than 4,000 engineers that make over $500k. I'd guess it's an order of magnitude more. I bet well over 1,000 engineers just at Google alone make over $500k. Then you have the rest of FAANG, the unicorns, high frequency trading, and other industries known for paying extremely well.

Engineers at Google can make over $500k starting at the staff level, so I think my estimate of 1,000 is pretty conservative considering the company has over 100,000 employees.

https://www.levels.fyi/