You can't just claim one absolute number as the comp for all "senior engineers". There's a huge amount of variance, within FAANG and elsewhere. As a simple ex

You can't just claim one absolute number as the comp for all "senior engineers". There's a huge amount of variance, within FAANG and elsewhere. As a simple example, SDE III at Amazon typically pays a bit more than $300k. Principal SDE, the next rank above that, will pay well over $400k. And don't forget that during years of steep stock appreciation, like much of the past decade, actual compensation will often be higher than that.