I sort of guessed you were earlier in your career. The plateau broadly is around $250k in TC, with engineers having to move into management (e.g. change jobs) to earn much more. (Yes, there are some companies where this is not true. But most tech workers do not work at pure tech firms and so this is more aligned with their reality.)
Let's approximate a non-plateau career ladder this way:
- 20s: $150k
- 30s: $250k (+ ~65%)
- 40s: $410k (+ ~65%)
- 50s: $670k (+ $65%)
Does this look roughly like the compensation path for median engineers (people who spend most of their time writing code) at your company? If there are not a lot of people there in their 50s, it is likely that they are not paying median engineers with 25+ years of experience $670k. (This hints at the other plateau, which is that very experienced engineers are often pushed out of the field entirely. Would not want to be a 50+ engineer looking for work.)
To me those numbers look insanely high. Like even the 250k that you're using as a baseline for the plateau, that's around double what is expect for that experience.
Let's approximate a non-plateau career ladder this way:
- 20s: $150k
- 30s: $250k (+ ~65%)
- 40s: $410k (+ ~65%)
- 50s: $670k (+ $65%)
Does this look roughly like the compensation path for median engineers (people who spend most of their time writing code) at your company? If there are not a lot of people there in their 50s, it is likely that they are not paying median engineers with 25+ years of experience $670k. (This hints at the other plateau, which is that very experienced engineers are often pushed out of the field entirely. Would not want to be a 50+ engineer looking for work.)