Programmers' salaries at Google $250k (and up)
HN has a curious relationship to money some of the time.a)  Many of us watched our classmates go into management consulting, investment banking, finance, medicine, law, etc.  These are all fields where $250k is not exactly outlandish for a 29 year old.b)  We have a lot of friendly, accessible fellow posters who write computer code and are financially very successful.c)  We talk about $X million valuations and $YY million acquisitions and $Z billion IPOs the way catering company owners discuss the price of tomatoes.d)  We have heard many credible people complain of how difficult it is to hire and retain engineers.  So difficult, in fact, that they'd pay $10k+ just for an introduction or $50k+ for an actual placement.e)  We understand incentive structures and equity grants exist.f)  We routinely read industry news like "Google and Facebook in heated war for talent", "The going rate for an acquisition-to-hire is $1 million per engineer", "Four large technology firms were engaged in a gentlemen's agreement to conspire against their employees until the government told them it was cartelicious", "Productivity per engineer is going through the roof", "Company Z supports Q00,000 paying customers per engineer", "Efforts of individual engineers have succeeded in adding millions to billions of dollars of value to some companies", etc etc etc, and generally seem to be at least as savvy as C-students in Microecon 101.and yetg)  Talk of engineers receiving wages above some magic threshold is met with disbelief, scorn, and a wee bit of jealousy.It isn't hugely interesting to me what any particular person at a particular company is making, but is $250k an outlandish total compensation number?  No, it is clearly achievable.  Do you have to be programming demigod to achieve it?  No, compensation moves along with several different axes and programming ability isn't the main one.  Is this anecdote a freak of nature which we'll never see again?  No, signs point that this will become increasingly more common over time.