Being an old-timer in the valley, I was shocked to see the pay-packages from FANGs starting in about 2012 or so when facebook went IPO.
The monopolies and new-age SAAS companies (meta,google,netflix, salesforce, servicenow) went crazy in the comp for sw engineers, and the others had to play catchup. Specifically, the companies used RSUs which could be hidden in non-gaap earnings statements. gaap earnings were ignored in the zero-interest era for high growth sw firms.
The more established (low-growth) firms from a previous era (cisco, ibm, hp) saw the unsustainability of the comp structure, but could not do anything.
The monopolies and new-age SAAS companies (meta,google,netflix, salesforce, servicenow) went crazy in the comp for sw engineers, and the others had to play catchup. Specifically, the companies used RSUs which could be hidden in non-gaap earnings statements. gaap earnings were ignored in the zero-interest era for high growth sw firms.
The more established (low-growth) firms from a previous era (cisco, ibm, hp) saw the unsustainability of the comp structure, but could not do anything.