My thoughts exactly $400K? Could someone being paid this level of money please share your career path.
I had been working remotely for a long time for a small company, and making what I considered to be good money, considering that I lived in a fly-over state. When I was hired at Google, it more than doubled my salary after a while, when stock grants began to vest.
I now work for Netflix, and I am making even more than I was at Google. To this day, I cannot believe I am paid so much.
All-in-all, I work less, and have a far better work-life balance than I did a few years ago, when working for the small company. In that company, I had sole responsibility for an entire product area, and often worked over 80 hours per week.
As an afterthought, I actually worked far less at Google. Probably about 45 hours a week. It was like a vacation. Being a cog in a machine and not on-call 24/7 was refreshing and enormously freeing after years of constant pressure.
The taxes on equity are a huge PITA when equity is a large fraction of your salary. This is because they withhold at only 25%, even if your tax bracket is higher. This means you have to file quarterly estimated tax payments or over-withhold from your salary.
I much prefer Netflix, where I just get salary. I might even be able to do my own taxes again!
But it's also a tax hassle...though it's hard to complain about it.
Or a hybrid (pay a reasonable amount in estimated taxes but don't put any serious effort into getting it exact).
Sheesh!