Holy cow, $200k with 1 year? Were you a strong student at a high-ranked academic program? PhD? Particularly gifted individual with proven high-quality amateur/hobby work?

I got lucky in that I joined early enough to get an annual raise + performance evaluation while being under a year in.

This is a pretty standard offer at meta/google in NYC or the bay area though; I didn't negotiate equity at all so I know a few people making more. I think it's definitely possible to get into meta/google without any of those things but tbf I was very fortunate because I did 4 big tech internships and came from a top 5 school.

I know people making about as much who didn't do internships or go to a top school, though but were able to get noticed by a recruiter and then pass the interviews

edit: also i looked at https://www.levels.fyi/2022/ and applied to all of the top companies I saw

I knew salary distributions were bimodal but I never realized it was so separated even at entry level. Outside of these top companies, from what I have seen, entry-level IC offers have been stagnant for years in the 60-80k range.

That’s a pretty standard entry-level comp at a well-paying Bay Area company

That's bonkers to me. In the northeast US even at 5+ years exp you still need to get into a big company like Meta or Google to have a reasonably good shot at 200k+ as an IC.

Generally compensation here tracks those companies.