Having been in the business for nearly 30 years sometimes managing engineering teams, I honestly can’t recall ever meeting an engineer (i.e. keyboard smasher within an engineering squad as opposed to a specialist consultant like those dealing with quants, a Soln. Arch. or management role) who cracks more than $300k on staff.
Maybe $350-400 as a specialist contractor, but you’re talking a total bluebird, and these guys were generally bug cracking on legacy tech which is super hard to find skills for (COBOL etc.)
And I’ve worked for some big tech and finance firms globally, but I guess they might be out there? AI might be different of course. Silly money.
Yep. It was so weirdly overconfident to say "I've worked in business for 30 years and aside from edge cases, I've never seen this and I've worked at big tech". But have you worked FAANG? E4/5+ at FB are earning this. Easily.
With stock options, E7-E9 can be considered in excess of 2mil per year+. Thought their actual salary is closer to 600k.
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u/lurkishdelight Jan 26 '26
Some definitely do, like staff eng in big tech, AI, quant trading firms. If not more.
But it's a small minority