alt Hacker NewsNote that those are total comp numbers. Something like 60% of that is dependent on performance review, which is fed in large part by automatically collected metrics like number of commits, number of code reviews ticked off, the LLM token usage leaderboards etc; creating all the perverse incentives you'd expect.
So you can rely on income to precisely the extent you are willing to destroy your soul.
its a bit more complex than that.
However when you join you are given a bunch of shares that are paid out every quarter.
The wage is tied explicitly to your level, the number of shares is a bit more flexible. dpeending on what area you work in, and how in demand your role was, your shares make up between 10and 70% of your take home wage.
Every year you get "refreshers", again calculated centrally by level. For example an "E5" (the lowest level of senior engineer) may get a refresher of $150k of shares at january prices. Your performance grade is then used as a multiplier (ie bad == 0, ok == .75 good == *1.0 etc etc etc)
so even if youre not that successful you can amass a large amount of shares.