are people still getting 125k sign on bonus today?

Unfortunately, this is much more rare in today's market 😐 I've not heard of a signing bonus like this in recent years.

It's a combination of the market and also the company. Even in a bull market, very few companies were offering 6 figure signing bonuses to new grads. Facebook was exceptional back then as well.

I believe Meta still offers more sign-on bonuses compared to peer companies, but they've gone more toward the average in the past 10 years. (This is unsurprising since a company will naturally revert to the mean as they become so much bigger.)

However, it's one of the easiest components of the offer to negotiate: Core Principles Of Negotiation