Fully expecting utter disbelief and skepticism, the best information I have indicates the compensation cap at FB is ~$3M. I have personally made up to $1.5M in a year doing AI work. If I had a higher threshold for pedigree BS in tech, I could have made ~$2M this year (but I don't and I have run out of you-know-whats to give about that personality type because life is too short for working with them IMO). In contrast, the NYT reported (previously) non-profit OpenAI's CEO made $2M annually from the get-go. I'm sure it's more now that it's OpenAI LP. And then there's Anthony Lewandowski's $120M comp at Waymo that somehow just wasn't enough for him. I can't relate to that.
Before AI, the most I had ever made in a year was $800K based on a long stock options play for a public company I knew was undervalued (and I was there for its rock bottom). And in academia, the most I ever made was $30K as a post-doc and $13K as a grad student before that. That anyone wonders why non-tenured sorts flee is mind-blowing.
In contrast, I've seen ruthless tenured types pull 7 figures with multiple labs at multiple institutions and lucrative consulting contracts with private industry and the military. All whilst cheating on their spouses or sleeping with their students, sometimes both.
High on the technical track as an IC that made multiple significant moneymaking contributions over the past decade (which was used against me last year at my last employer because I hadn't done sufficient pure research in that past decade to merit consideration as a scientist despite my doctorate).
My attempt to go into management was pretty disastrous due to my inexperience and toxic internal politics. And that made me lose interesting in pursuing it further because politics are just not my strong suite.
Mid-range engineers at FB I know personally are making ~$500K supporting AI efforts. AI is really lucrative for now and probably always will be. But I hope there's a purge of the posers in the field somewhere down the road.
The salaries at FAANGS are level-driven, so I refer to levels.fyi. I think the perk of being a research scientist is more freedom, building prototypes, not having to do support/oncalls in general, just being able to hand off that type of work.
3x to 4x depending on col. Grad student stipends are only 30k, sometimes lower
ML isn't much higher paid than standard engineering, but new PhDs from top schools who would've been competitive faculty applicants tend to get jobs at top paying firms and enter toward the top of the non-executive ranks.
