Definitely good news, but to put it in perspective, that's about 0.75x - 1x annual salary for an experienced developer that works on compilers. My *guess* is that Microsoft spends at least 10-20x that amount of money on TypeScript annually, and much more on C++/C# etc.
There are developers that earn that much, and the probability goes up at MS, Mozilla, etc, but I think a lot of qualified experienced Compiler developers exist who are earning less than the 150k a year when you consider the global market and smaller compilers. But the over all cost of a developer is not just their salary.
Really though I've found jobs similar to compiler developer for an ANSI standard compiler at big tech to include a lot of hazard pay for how disagreeable the job actually is compared to one with more freedom.
My guess (and it's just that), is that a role on newish, high potential project like this would be quite something to land for the right person (i.e. they're already sold on Zig), and some reasonable funding allowing them to not have to work two jobs or only do nights/weekends is the enabler.
