Risk adjustment is definitely appropriate, but I think the author is being conservative even with this in mind.<p>You&#x27;re right that &quot;Senior&quot; is still mid-level, but the author is being conservative.<p>The reality at a healthy, profitable company is something like this: $250k being the &quot;total comp&quot; for someone is a T5 seems right to me, even adjusting for risk.  A T5 at Google, Facebook, or Apple is likely earning much more than this as their stock from 4 years ago is vesting at a much higher price than it was granted at.<p>150k guaranteed comp, 25k bonus, 75k vesting equity is low for the companies w&#x2F; equity run-ups in the past several years, in my opinion.  Also worth noting -- the bonus is basically guaranteed.  It can be much higher if you get very good performance ratings.<p>The author also didn&#x27;t include 401k matching (about 8.5k there), free offsites to go skiing or go to Vegas (w&#x2F; team trips to Hawaii not unheard of for high profile, long-term projects), generous medical&#x2F;dental&#x2F;vision benefits, free food, free gyms, matching charitable donations...<p>And IDK if it&#x27;s just my team, I don&#x27;t see people working extremely long hours.<p>You&#x27;re totally right that you&#x27;re at the mercy of stock prices in some regard -- but it works in two directions.  Both FB and GOOG have gone up something like 150% in the past 5 years.  So if someone got an initial stock grant of 200k vesting over 4 years, last year that 50k at vest time was more like 100k.  Meanwhile they&#x27;ve gotten subsequent equity refresh grants -- the actual equity comp might be more like 200k, not 75k.