To be fair, I am in Silicon Valley so that biases the numbers towards the higher end of the ranges. But I took a ~200K pay cut from my previous job to my current one because I went from a successful public company (not FAANG but similar pay) to a startup. Startups are a gamble for sure, maybe it's not worth anything. But the base salary is still good enough to pay all my bills, so that's good enough. I try to maximize happiness (I don't always succeed!), not income.

> But I took a ~200K pay cut from my previous job to my current one

I'm willing to bet that if ~90% of posters on HN would take a ~200k pay cut they'd have to pay their employer money.

You're most likely living in an entirely different world to regular folks.

It's an interesting topic, I always wonder where reality is. An argument for more transparent comp info.

When HN has comp discussions, everyone points out that approximately everyone with any experience is making way more than 500K with levels.fyi offered as the evidence. I've sometimes expressed some doubt about those numbers but I'm always labeled as uninformed. Ok so I guess everyone truly is making more than 500K.

Startups don't pay very well, so if > 500K is the norm for FAANG-level, then certainly 100K or 200K or 300K++ pay cut is the norm as well for going into a startup?

LOL 500k?! Dude (or dudedette)... That's more than specialist doctors make where I live (Ontario). That's mind boggling money. The average for a very experienced dev here is 120k-ish. CAD. You live in a bubble my friend.

FAANGs are at best half a million to 1 million people and there are at least 35 million developers out there, in total.

Even FAANGs don't pay that well except for maybe 10-20 select locations.

My point is that most devs worldwide, even with experience, make less than $200k in total. More like less than $100k.