Staff engineer at Google pays pretty well. I'm somewhere in the $215-245k base salary range, with a 20-30% bonus target and equity comp that is roughly equal to my base salary. So all in all I pull down about $500k per year. I get a bit more if the stock has been going up, a bit less if the stock has been going down. We sell all our stock automatically as it vests, so the compensation is very close to being like cash. I have 8-12 years of experience and tenure with the company. (The ranges are partly obscured so that I can't be identified, and partly because I genuinely do not keep track at this point of how much I make.)
Didn't do anything particularly amazing to get here. Worked for a few good teams, and people liked the code I wrote, especially my management. I had very supportive managers who pushed hard for their people to be promoted when warranted. I don't have any special skills beyond being a C++ server programmer and everything that entails -- expert knowledge of debugging and performance on various levels, solid design and coding skill, and deep familiarity with many Google proprietary systems.
Didn't do anything particularly amazing to get here. Worked for a few good teams, and people liked the code I wrote, especially my management. I had very supportive managers who pushed hard for their people to be promoted when warranted. I don't have any special skills beyond being a C++ server programmer and everything that entails -- expert knowledge of debugging and performance on various levels, solid design and coding skill, and deep familiarity with many Google proprietary systems.