Well I've never worked in FAANG, so yeah my knowledge of exact compensation levels is Glassdoor stats, which largely match up with what you're saying. Perhaps

Well I've never worked in FAANG, so yeah my knowledge of exact compensation levels is Glassdoor stats, which largely match up with what you're saying. Perhaps my perspective is slightly skewed. Even just comparing to FAANG base salaries: From the perspective of a big defense contractor, we recently had a new grad start on our team, level 1 software engineer with a bachelor's in computer science from a mid-rank university, and he's making 85k/year. Maybe in 5 years he can expect to make about 115k between yearly raises and promotion to level 2, maybe 130k if he busts his ass and makes level 3 in that time. 200k+ is reserved for the engineers that manage to get their names on patents and know the right people/get lucky, and typically have decades of experience at the company and extremely deep knowledge of a high-value subject.