&quot;a handful of engineers at a handful of companies&quot;<p>I think that phrasing is ambiguous. It makes it sound like even at Google only the outliers make that much. Most engineers make a lot of money at Google (relative to startups). It&#x27;s not just the outliers within Google that make good money.<p>The entire set of engineers at Google can be considered outliers, especially given the sample set of all software engineers in the valley.<p>The point I try to make is that from a talent perspective, I don&#x27;t think Google engineers are significant outliers. At least, not to the degree they are outliers from a compensation perspective. That&#x27;s the gap I&#x27;d like to close. There&#x27;s plenty of Google level talent at startups not making anywhere near what they would make at Google, and a big part of that is misinformation.