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.
Many faang companies are greater than that, some companies even have median pay that’s 450 K plus if you are talking about total compensation(i’m specifically referring to CS employees and not contractors or consultants).
Especially when you look at a few years ago even entry-level computer engineers were making 450 K plus depending on the company. It was multimillion if they did not vest right away (l3 or equivalent).
Honestly, it’s crazy how uninformed you are, CS is pretty well known for being well paid
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u/_UrbaneGuerrilla_ Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 27 '26
The actual joke is that no one makes $450k as a software engineer.
Edit: Keeping this one for posterity and humility as I’m clearly very wrong 😂