[sinatra]

Just to be fair, for 90% of the world, the kinds of compensation many hacker news readers have (a Silicon Valley engineer who gets a high base plus bonus plus equity) would also be considered “holy guacamole, whatever is the angle I look at it … does not make any f_ing sense”

[abeppu]

Honestly, I get that.

I work at a company with engineers mostly in the US and in an EU country, and my understanding is that, though our salaries in that EU country are top of the range, they are still meaningfully lower than for US engineers. The international talent pool is very good, and available at considerable savings. While I am glad I have my job, and that companies still seem willing to pay Bay Area salaries, I don't fully get why.

[jayd16]

If you look at the cost of living in SF and what you get, it starts to make sense. What is the equivalent argument for hundreds of millions?

[oars]

Janitors, baristas, waiters, waitresses, bus drivers are also living in the Bay Area on nowhere close to those salaries.

SF engineer salaries are still insane to these people. And they need to deal with the cost of living in SF.

[cscurmudgeon]

Why should there be a justification? The only argument should be between Google and Pichai.

Strangely, why aren't we doing the same for actors and sports stars?

[bmitc]

That is a fair critique and overall true. But it also highlights the pay of these CEOs to be so absurd as to be barely comprehensible. It makes me wonder what types of personalities these people are. If I even had that salary for a year, max three, I'd retire and spend time learning and doing non-profit and foundation work.

[welshwelsh]

That's why you'll never make CEO pay. Most people, myself included, will happily retire with a couple million.

A lot of these people have ambitions that require a lot more money than that. Maybe they want to cure aging or explore space or something.

Another way of looking at it: if someone makes 100m a year and they are thinking about retiring, how much would you need to offer for them to choose to work another year instead? That's how much you need to pay them next year.

[ghaff]

People for whom being an important executive is at least almost as important as having as much money as they can reasonably consume.

Certainly there’s a vast range of FIRE styles and even what constitutes retirement but at some level it’s a combination of keeping score, feeling valued relative to peers (see also sports), and the industry recognition.