There are a lot of things that I cannot grasp, that are still true.<p>I know of one Big Five tech company where the <i>lowest pay bracket</i> for permanent-position software engineers is $110k USD base salary, plus substantial annual bonus and liquid stock (roughly $150k total comp, plus perks).  Interns get less base and no bonus&#x2F;stock, I think.<p>If we assume that all of the Big Five are within 20% of that, and if we also assume that every startup wants to hire &quot;only the best&quot; (or, more realistically, every startup wants to credibly lie to themselves that they do so), what do you figure they need to pay to get anybody taking their jobs seriously?<p>Market forces, friend.<p>Note that these are not salaries that apply to any ol&#x27; schlob who can sling a little HTML and got Apache running that one time, this isn&#x27;t 1998.