I'm sorry but the idea that it's "pretty easy" to make 10x the median personal income in the US by just working for FAANG is just plain idiotic. Even just among software developers, most make $120k or less. You're in the top 10% of software developers if you make over $170k. Even at FAANG, for example Google, you're going to be L6/L7 before you hit $500k TC. I don't know anyone serious who would say that getting to L7 at Google is "pretty easy," certainly nobody who's done it.
Maybe, if you're on the tail end of a particularly well-timed stock grant and you have a really crazy definition of "plenty." But Levels puts recent L5 offers much closer to $350k, which to be clear is still more than a lot of physicians and most lawyers make.
You said FAANG, so I picked the one that has the reputation for best work-to-pay ratio. Rather than nitpicking specifics perhaps try to justify that it's "pretty easy" to make half a million dollars a year typing JavaScript into a computer.
Quite a bit I'm sure, but I'm sure there are a lot of developers making less than that barely breaking even on the "providing value" front. We don't talk about it here often but a lot of developers are pretty bad at what they do.
Unfortunately I've seen these people, but I would hardly call them developers/programmers, even if their work title is that... I guess I can't be choosy with national statistics.
