These threads always surprise me. I'm a director of software engineering in a medium sized company (~3k employees) not located in a big metro but with plenty of people working from competitive areas (I am in the Seattle area myself). My base is a bit over $200k with a 20% bonus and some stock options. I know I'm on the higher end compared to my peers, and I know what my direct and indirect reports make. My wife works for a huge aerospace company as a senior manager and makes about the same as I do. I have a bunch of other people I know what they make, including a very senior engineer at a FAANG company who with 600k this year (everything included) is the highest compensated person I know personally. It's amazing how people throw around 500K like it's nothing. I'm either doing things very wrong/ am clueless or there's some weird bias for crazily over-compensated people in threads here.