I&#x27;m confused at the nay sayers. There are two ways I interpret it.<p>1. People are telling the truth, but theres selection bias. Remember the software world is very broad. A software engineer at Logitech doesn&#x27;t make nearly as much as one at Google.<p>2. People are liars. It&#x27;s really rare for an engineer at Google to make over $200k.<p>I can sympathize with the first point (which I think is what you are saying), but I have also seen the second point. People get angry when they realize they are underpaid. The truth is that startups take advantage of people. Most engineers don&#x27;t realize this. If talented engineers in the valley all realized what the opportunity cost of working for a startup is, then startups would have to start paying closer to what BigCos pay. And that&#x27;s a good thing. It means those of us trapped by golden handcuffs at BigCos (mortgage, kids, whatever) have alternatives.