Meta paid VR developers salaries of up to $1 million. Facebook’s owner is now in financial trouble.

 

For years, Meta has pushed a rosy vision about the future of human communication in which people — represented by a diverse slate of avatars — work, play and shop together in immersive digital worlds accessible through virtual reality-powered devices.

What the company hasn’t said is that it’s paying exorbitant salaries to programmers to turn that vision into a reality. Programmers capable of building out virtual reality-powered games, apps and technology can earn total compensation from $600,000 to packages approaching $1 million, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

The Facebook parent company is “paying significantly more than a lot of gaming companies,” said Andiamo chief executive Patrick McAdams, whose firm recruits tech talent for big and small companies. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that their total compensation is double or more than double of what you’ll get at a large gaming company.”

Of the virtual reality developers who were offered jobs at Meta over the last nine months, those that were in the top 90th percentile in terms of total compensation earned an average of $538,800, according to data from Levels.fyi, which tracks salaries in the tech industry. That figure was higher than the $495,400 Apple paid its highest-earning developers and the $440,000 Google paid its VR programmers, the data showed. Apple, Google and Meta all paid comparable base salaries, according to the data.