I've been in working in investment banks for 10 years and I've never seen any base salaries this high. If these answers are true then they must include a very generous bonus or be at hedge funds.
The only SE roles I know if that sort of salary range is in financial services for a couple of the top guys in the company. No way is that anywhere near standard salary for 99.99% of employees.
Finance is like its own universe. The salaries for software are like nothing I've seen anywhere else. I get the sense there's so much money sloshing around it doesn't seem that out of wack to anybody. The investment guys probably can't even figure out how anyone could even live on 250K a year.
> Finance is like its own universe. The salaries for software are like nothing I've seen anywhere else.
That's because Finance is not grounded in Reality. Destroying the world's economies and the wealth of us little folks everywhere is massively lucrative, who knew?!