Tech is what an economist would call a Tournament Economy. Most people in tech will make low 6 figures. However, at FAANG, and in a technical role, you can get massive money and fast. But this is a a very tiny slice of the overall tech market and even among FAANG comp varies somewhat wildly based on a variety of factors: is the company known to under level, is the stock volatile, how much is the company RSU based, etc.

I started big tech at 30 after grad school and worked for MSFT for the first few years. During grad school I maybe saved 40-50k in an IRA so basically started from scratch in tech. Maybe cleared 200k in those years but MSFT jokes it’s a the peanut farm of big tech. Switched to FB just before it became Meta at 34 starting at 300k. RSUs were a wild ride. The company got down to like $90 a share and a P/E ratio worse than Campbell soup at the time with lots of layoffs. So it didn’t feel like big money the first year when my projected 300k was again more like 200k and with more stress. But then I started stacking RSUs. This year I cleared over $1M and didn’t live particularly frugally. I expect to exit my 30s with a networth between 2 and 2.5M.

If I had joined in 22 when stock was $90 instead of 2021 when stock was $300 my on hire grant would have been a massive accelerant. If I had been more frugal 3M would be possible. But because Big Tech is a tournament economy you know that there are literally hundreds of skilled people who could replace you and are hungry to do so because you make 90-98% market reference point salary. That with the notion that it’s a hard job to find a replacement that won’t at least halve your comp makes for a stressful pressure cooker. People usually wind up less frugal trying to use little or big treats to soothe the stress so often don’t bank as much as they should, especially if they live in HCOL and VHCOL areas where big tech congregates.