Probably a few lying, mostly just massive selection bias. People who come here are already a very non-representative sample - heavily weighted toward specific

Probably a few lying, mostly just massive selection bias. People who come here are already a very non-representative sample - heavily weighted toward specific geography, specific age range, specific specialties, and more. Even within that set, the subset of those willing to post salary info will consist mostly of those not only above median but so far above median that they're confident of not being outdone by the next commenter. So you're seeing a fraction of a fraction of reality. For all its faults, a site like GlassDoor is likely to be closer to reality than a site like Hacker News. P.S. Whatever someone who has only ever worked at Google has to say about salaries in the industry at large is guaranteed to be wrong. Those comments aren't worth the power cost of transmitting and displaying them.