>It is true IF you live and work in the Bay Area, Seattle, and TLV - which represent the bulk of tech industry employment.

Is that actually true (the bulk of people in the tech industry are working in "big tech" or startups)?

I don't know if there's any hard data around this, but my understanding has been that people working for these types of companies are maybe a single digit percentage of all tech workers (if that).

People working for those companies are certainly the most vocal online, though, which maybe skews perception.

Sorry, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. The ladders are simply not comparable, even in the Bay Area. Sure, at the entry point where one transfers from the IC ladder to management compensation can even drop. However, that's the bottom rung - and one typically can't get straight into management as a new grad. The management ladder goes higher.