I’ve known some devs who were recent immigrants and did not speak much English. It wasn’t FAANG and not West coast so I don’t think they were making $200k but they got by and often paired with other devs who spoke their language and much better English.

Overall they were nice people and their English improved over time for the duration I knew them. It was a bit of a struggle to communicate sometimes but I didn’t mind it. Any time I felt frustrated about it I just thought about how they must be feeling, and it didn’t seem so bad anymore.

English is a pretty forgiving language.

In the bay area you can get away with very little english proficiency

OP was just talking about "doing basic life things."

Honestly, this question is really revealing, because it's the lower-paid SWE jobs that are probably not Bay Area or NYC, which are precisely the places where lower* English fluency is most likely to be tolerated or even the majority.

I was the only person on my 5-person team with 'Business English' at my first BA startup, so I got the job of writing all external-routing communications.

When I worked remote for a Midwest company years later, it was very clear that anything but perfect English was disqualifying in the eyes of a lot of (Midwest white male) management there.