At Meta, $400k would be high E4 or low E5. That’s someone earlier in their career who probably feels fairly anonymous and is used to taking all the deals they can get to live cheaply, even if they don’t need to anymore.
I’d honestly rather be paid less and have more equal pay across society, while not having to worry about age discrimination or medical debt or something wiping out my savings and throwing me out on the streets, however unlikely that may seem.
In the US, basically all of my spending outside of the basics is on things you could classify as avoiding ever being poor/homeless. No vacations or eating out or streaming subscriptions or “toys” or whatnot. Maybe these kids feel that same pressure but took it too far, into fraudulent territory.
I’m sure they mean total compensation, as reflected in employee W-2 forms. Modulo a few details, public company stock-based compensation is as good as cash the moment it vests (and in fact is cash if you make an automatic sell-all election, which is not subject to trading windows).
