Comment by comp_throw7

A few points:

- 450k is not, actually, top-of-band for senior engineers right now. There are some companies where that's approximately true (i.e. Google) and some where the number is much higher (Netflix goes without saying, Amazon routinely breaks 500k, Uber is hitting 480-500k, Cruise breaks 500k, Snapchat hits 550-600k at L5, etc).

- Well, since I'm looking at annualized compensation, I am considering stacked refreshers. I don't think job-hopping ~3 times is an enormous ask.

- I certainly wasn't assuming market-beating returns, or living on ramen. But I certainly wasn't running the numbers such that one would be spending the equivalent of one's safe withdrawal rate pre-FIRE. I live unconstrained by budget concerns and don't even come close to spending half that. At 450k pre-tax I was assuming one would be saving ~200k/year, with 7% returns.

- I was also not assuming that one was starting from 0 at 27, since it's not like pre-senior one would be making barely enough to live on. Having something in the neighborhood of 500-600k saved up by then is something like the default outcome, given a typical single person's lifestyle (absent extravagantly expensive hobbies).

- Ok, sure, this gets you to 4m, adjusted for inflation (oops). Guess you gotta hit that third decade (barely).

- You aren't limited to SV; many companies in that tier support remote work and those that don't have a bunch of hubs across the US.

I'm genuinely not sure why you think that 450k is an outlier level of compensation for senior FAANG/adjacent engineers. One possible source of confusion - if you're just looking at the "Average Total Compensation" levels lists for those companies, those numbers are very low. Filter by "New Offers Only", and then remember that those offers don't include refreshers (which, over the course of the first 4 years at a company, will add something like 360k = 90k/year, assuming totally average performance and no multipliers). It might be in the top 50th percentile, though even that may be pessimistic.

As for 200k/year being shit to live on... I assume you're talking about living in Silicon Valley, which, shrug? I don't live in Silicon Valley and before I decided to substantially change my career direction, I was on-track (and that despite not even hitting 6-figure comp until a few years into my career).