There is valid criticism to be made, but the negativity in this thread is out of proportion.
As somebody who worked at Google for 5+ years, I'd like to emphasize a point: If you sustain good work [1] for a few years, you will be rewarded well beyond expectations [2]. Your compensation will depend on your performance, and not on your starting salary. I think this is unique to Google and maybe a few other tech giants. From this point of view, the generalization to 'big company' is flawed. But otherwise the points made by OP are true, and I wish more new grads would see it (and believe it).
[1] Your overall contribution to the project is important. Whether you work 30 or 50 hours a week to get there, it depends on you, of course.
[2] And those rewards do not depend on the stock price going up. That's just cream on top.
I'm at Microsoft for 3 years working in Redmond. SDE II. I'm getting paid 120k. I don't know where you're getting your numbers but 250k is very absurd. Rent is getting pretty crazy here, as the only bread winner I am kind of breaking even.
As somebody who worked at Google for 5+ years, I'd like to emphasize a point: If you sustain good work [1] for a few years, you will be rewarded well beyond expectations [2]. Your compensation will depend on your performance, and not on your starting salary. I think this is unique to Google and maybe a few other tech giants. From this point of view, the generalization to 'big company' is flawed. But otherwise the points made by OP are true, and I wish more new grads would see it (and believe it).
[1] Your overall contribution to the project is important. Whether you work 30 or 50 hours a week to get there, it depends on you, of course.
[2] And those rewards do not depend on the stock price going up. That's just cream on top.