Some engineers are being paid between $250k and $1M, says salary survey

OP trying to stoke them class divisions between the almost middle class and the sort of middle class. Damn them for almost making enough to afford somewhat desirable real-estate.

The policy failures of the "free market" (and the corrupt tax and political systems) are the ~2k billionaires vs. the declining real purchasing power of those at the midpoint and below over the past 70-80 years.

Employees who make $400k+/yr have insane time and performance expectation demands. There are many employees who will not take the next IC level because they have families (time constraints) and/or don't want the stress.

I work at megacorp MAANG where not everyone can afford baller real estate despite being Sr. SWE/SRE/PE/etc. I currently cannot. The past year, the buyers in the local real estate market were throwing ~20-40% over list because there was virtually no supply.

I can’t get companies to not find anything above $160k-$180k as jarring.

In my experience if you ask for $200k, you better be ready to do lots of on call, mentoring, hop on any call asked of you anytime, never have conflict with anybody, be super easy for managers to get along with (just shut up and say yes and do it no questions asked)

Kind of not worth it.

Specifically within California, the cost of living for things like housing is sky high if you live local to SF or SV. I live in a lcol and own a home, but home ownership with my same salary would be impossible in a HCOL area. I would easily pay 3-4x as much for the same amount of property. To relocate and keep the same standard of living, my salary would need to effectively 1.5-1.7x just to offset the costs of a higher mortgage payment. And renting in an average apartment in the area would cost at least much as my current mortgage.

How does that work? Do you get yearly RSUs?