Please include stock <i>grants</i>, because otherwise it&#x27;s a silly comparison.  With that included, I know  a <i>lot</i> of people in SV, NYC, and even Pittsburgh who meet that bar.  Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Microsoft -- all of these places pay over $200k total compensation for senior engineers.  A grant of shares of GOOG or MSFT every year isn&#x27;t likely to completely disappear within the vesting period...