600k in Silicon Valley is certainly not unheard of. That's within range for Staff Engineer and EM roles at top companies, and there are a lot of Staff Engineers

600k in Silicon Valley is certainly not unheard of. That's within range for Staff Engineer and EM roles at top companies, and there are a lot of Staff Engineers and EMs. In fact, it can go up quite a bit from there. M2 [0] pay can be in the 700k-900k range, and Director pay is typically 1M+. Keep in mind that salaries rarely go above 250k -- most of this compensation is in stock grants. [0] M2 is an engineering manager with quite a bit of scope, possibly with some M1s as reports. Imagine a group of 20-50 people total. Exact headcount can vary because "scope" is a bit of an abstract concept that is correlated with -- but not perfectly matched to -- headcount.