In fact levels.fyi shows an L4 Google SWE earning about $270k. GP's story of someone earning $300k in 2017 is certainly an outlier.

Is it easy to fetch Google offers from late 2017 to get a distribution? I believe it was close to top of the range back then.

Regarding the $270k number, looking at the distribution in levels.fyi for L4 in SF Bay Area: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi...

The 75th percentile is $290k which fits the comment I was replying to ("a little under $300k") and by definition not an outlier.

Actually, looking at the earliest data points levels.fyi still shows under the same page, $300k doesn't seem to be an outlier in 2017 either: https://imgur.com/a/hhO7dQE

Anecdotally, Google has not become any more competitive in the past few years as far as compensation goes.

I am familiar with levels.fyi (and was back in 2017 as well), what did you mean?