$800k sounds like a lot of money, and it is of course. I considered chasing it, because it’s within the realm of possibility for me. But when I looked at housing in the area, I was shocked to find that $800k was not enough. Regular ol’ houses are $3M plus, and the schools are shockingly not that great. I live in Seattle, where I own a home that’s expensive compared to most other places, and still I couldn’t make the math work without taking a big drop in quality of life. You could, of course, just rent, but $800k is such a big number that I just assumed if that was my salary, I wouldn’t have to think twice about affording a nice house.

I don't think that's it, if anything it's chump change next to what they must have envisioned for themselves in the future. These are people hoping to be the next "ground floor" people in the next Google or Amazon, and while $800k per annum is a ton of money, it's closer to $0 than the billions they were probably anticipating.

I mean, the mission of the company is almost just to bring about a post-money world via developing AGI. Given that, it's only 800,000 reasons for those employees who either

1. don't really believe in the mission 2. recognize that they are nowhere near AGI