2 things when you read between the line: 1) Numbers are total compensation, the base salary is a LARGE amount below that. Few of the figures are hinting to bon

2 things when you read between the line: 1) Numbers are total compensation, the base salary is a LARGE amount below that. Few of the figures are hinting to bonus/shares being 50% of the base, if not more. That's not to say it's bad but that's something to bear in mind. Some of the quoted companies are worthless because non public, other companies might go either way (Uber is not Facebook/Apple/Microsoft when it comes to stock). You certainly want to see how the shares are allocated, on what schedules, how's the taxation is working (US equity in US dollar can be big pain in Europe). Bonus are for those who believe in them (Uber is not known for having nice and stable management layer). 2) These are staff engineer positions, which are incredibly rare and selective. - Not sure if Uber Staff is like L6 or L7, either way you're probably not going to achieve that in your lifetime. The later is like the head of a department with 100+ people below them them, basically a whole small company (if you want to talk about individual contributors it's even rarer than that). For the former, we're talking about a person with two decades of experience in tech and probably a chunk in the web industry (better have competing offers from Facebook London or Google Zurich). That's really the counterpart to the $600k developers from SV/NYC, a very far cry from the average developer, even a far cry from the usual good performer. edit: Uber only IPO'ed in 2019. The article is talking about offers going as far as 2016. These offers were basically imaginary money. Employees didn't see a penny of it unless they were still in 2020 (after lockup period), and if they were, the realized number was certainly very different than the initial promise (note: Uber went down after IPO).