Everyone on HN knows someone whose brother's uncle's girlfriend's nephew's former roommate works at Facebook and made $400K as a developer. And they'll point to that one person and say "See, it is possible to make $400K in tech." Yes, it is technically possible, just like it's possible to do plenty of difficult things. That doesn't make these salaries common. For every 1 person making $400K-800K at FAANG in the Bay Area, how many dozens are working outside the Bay Area and/or for some no-name company making $120K?

It probably depends. I know at a very senior level in a lot of companies, you can hit a base salary around half that for Staff/Principal positions and some Architect roles, especially in higher paying areas. The value of stock offerings and other compensation, bonuses etc will vary a lot though. You may grind out 5-10 years to reach that level, then 5 years to fully vest at half that pay to see a $1M stock payout at 5 years bringing the average to $400k. Who knows. Different arrangements work differently.

As an aside, when the market is relatively good, don't be afraid to straight up ask where compensation is on given roles when recruiters reach out, or to ask for more than you think you might get. You're pretty unlikely to get $400k or anywhere near it as a base... but you'd be surprised how reachable say $150k+ is as a base salary for a remote position when you aren't in SF or another major/expensive city.

It's the typical case for Bay Area-HQ tech companies, at essentially all levels for Tier-1 companies, higher levels at Tier-2/3 companies, and specialist roles beyond that.

"software engineering" doesn't print money any more than being "in finance" does, you'll make more or less depending on what company you do it for.

Do you work in California for a company in this list? Meta Amazon Google Netflix Airbnb Stripe Square Microsoft

If not it's unsurprising. But these actually are typical offers at those companies including Base Salary + Stock + Bonus.

in the sfba, levels.fyi shows it roughly at 85%-ile, not everyone - but hardly extreme outlier