I'm a senior software engineer in the Bay Area and spend most of my days writing Javascript/Ruby. I don't manage anyone directly, but have technical/product leadership responsibility on my team.
My gross comp is ~$350k, 60% cash.
The 3 main learnings that I've leveraged to get that high are:
0) be the top performer on your team, no excuses
1) ask very explicitly for the things you want [0]
2) negotiate from a position of power (have a BATNA [1])
---
[0] "I'd like a raise" != "I'd like my salary to be $X"
Would also be interested in some examples, just for curiosity sake. COBOL maybe? Wild guess at something specialized/scarce.
Personally, the only people I know in the 200+ club are in some form of management and rarely, if ever, code anymore. But then we are back into the anecdotal realm..
Example specialties of people I know in the $250k+ range:
* Machine learning + finance
* iOS (I know several examples here)
* Android
* Enterprise Java
* Embedded development
* Specific scientific expertise (a friend is into optics and diffraction and makes $250/hour freelance, with some coding and some design)
I don't know any COBOL programmers. Or at least if I do, they're in the closet. :)
This is universally from big companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Ball Aerospace, etc.
The one on Queen Anne (upper, there isn't one in lower) is nice but pretty small. They are moving to the old Met Market location next year which will be a lot bigger.
The "Blue Star" is the $30k version, in the future. The Model X is an incremental modification of the Model S into a crossover SUV, available in 2014.
I'd love a "Blue Star Performance" for $50k -- I don't need a car as big as the Model S/X, but want 300 mile range, supercharger, and 4-5 sec 0-60. I'd be ok with a roadster except I hate convertibles and would like something a little bigger, like BMW 3er size.
