If these were elite software engineers and the compensation was $100,000 per year, then either (a) the auction did not work, or (b) that is a fair market value for engineers (which would mean that the auction worked, but the raison d'etre for it is suspect).
Engineering comp. is a long discussion, but I don't think the best engineers are under-compensated so much as under-utilized. Companies pay appropriate to the work people are doing, but staff engineers 3-5 years below what they're usually capable of.
I don't think he was claiming that $100k was a good or bad offer. He was doing napkin math. If the offers were within the ballpark of $100k (a nice round number), then there were about 300 offers. Which makes the given $30m number not useless at all.
Engineering comp. is a long discussion, but I don't think the best engineers are under-compensated so much as under-utilized. Companies pay appropriate to the work people are doing, but staff engineers 3-5 years below what they're usually capable of.