> Plus, that stock compensation vests typically over 4 years then goes away. A few companies do “refresh” grants to partially make up for this This depends on

> Plus, that stock compensation vests typically over 4 years then goes away. A few companies do “refresh” grants to partially make up for this This depends on the company. Amazon and Microsoft generally don't, but facebook and Google do. If I hadn't negotiated my initial grant upward, my refresh last year (year 3) would have been the same size, and the one I'll get in a few months will very likely be larger. I'll still see a drop in comp year 5 due to an interaction between stock growth and my first year's grant being small, but ehhh. > When people come into HN salary threads and say things like “software engineers make $500k” what they really mean is Yes and no. Like L6 is certainly not common, but it's also not a particularly outlier level (I can crank of a list of 10 people at that level I work with on a weekly basis), and they're probably all pulling in something close to 500K, and will be forever.