Some notes from a former FB engineer (DE, E5, London).

First of all, congrats to the author of the post! Even having worked there, seeing these numbers is a bit shocking :)

Some comments to help cool down EU emotions in this thread.

As the author points out, there are very few engineers at FB who have this sort of career path or income.
The author says that from year 2-8, every single year he got an "additional grant" over the refresher stock. I asked a friend who is a former Eng.Man. at FB, he says that these "additional grants" are given to very few people every year by the executive team, so this makes the career path even more of an outlier. He says this level of income is unusual even for E7-E8s. This career path is probably the statistical quivalent of building a successful startup and cashing out.

Also, to end up with the these W2 numbers (W2 is a tax form in the US, by W2 the author means "total gross compensation"), you need to join early, to get the nice stock appreciation. Having said that, so far it's never been the wrong time to join: in 2016 when I joined (FB was a 10+ yo company) stock was at ~$100, now it's at ~$300 :)

How are these numbers in EU offices: in London (in 2016-17), number were significantly lower than in US, both base salary (and hence bonus, since it's a multiplier) and stock grants, and also opportunities (products) and visibility (eg. every 6 months I got my rating from an unknown quorum of people at the Menlo Park HQ, and I had mostly remote managers who didn't have much time for me). Expect to make -25-50% if you're in London vs Menlo Park for the same work/effort. Per my recollection, as an E5 back then, everything added up (base, bonus, stock), my net salary was around 7k GBP/mo. If I would have stuck around at FB, without levelups, just because of stock appreciation and refresher stocks I'd probably be making >10k GBP/mo now. SWEs make ~20% more than DEs.

Also, to put the author's promotion track into perspective, I found that it's very hard to get promoted at FB. When I was hired (35 yo, working as a SWE/Data/Manager since 23), I felt E5 is under-leveling me, so I worked very hard throughout my time there, working weekends, doing SWE projects, etc. While working there, I saw how strong the talent pool is at FB, and how steep the expectations are (wrt measurable and consistent impact of your work), so I knew that I'm definitely not at an E7 or above, but I did feel that I'm an "entry E6 level" (which is significantly more money than E5). But getting leveled up was out of the question, there were simply no opportunities, either work or visibility for DEs in London at that time. So I left after ~20 months. In retrospect, the right thing to do psychologically, assuming you stay for the long-run, is just ignore the levels, collect the refresher stocks, hope/wait for the stock to appreciate, make/look for/wait for impactful projects, but take the long view (it's a marathon, not a sprint).

Overall, my advice for EU people: if you get a chance to interview at a FAANG, take it, it's a good experience! If you get an offer, take it, you'll come out ahead wrt learning, money, and you'll have a big stamp of approval on your CV. If you don't like it, you can always leave and it'll be easy for you to get another job.