I&#x27;m currently still in school, and I personally don&#x27;t know anyone who is making $250k&#x2F;year five years into their career. But I have seen new grad offers that make that number seem reasonable. One of my friends is a really smart developer who got several offers from places competitive with those companies. I don&#x27;t think they really had much full-time work experience. The first year total comp in one of their offers was around $200k. A 25% compensation increase over five years seems reasonable to me.<p>Edit: It does kind of depend on how you value stock&#x2F;RSUs in your compensation package. Most of the offers they got were from public companies that were well run. So I personally would not be extremely worried about the stock losing most of its value before I was able to sell.