Actually, Google pays under the average of top companies, because as a top tier company, they can afford. Most people I know who went to work for Google took a pay cut but don't have a single regret about it.
> A simpler explanation is that they pay well and are prestigious and so get a lot more good candidates.
Their pay and prestige will attract even more bad candidates.
How do you separate good from bad candidates?
That's right: a kick-ass interview process.
Compared to who? They pay more than AMZN/MS/FB/AAPL/etc. for equal level, but are stingier with levels. You might be correct that certain other companies pay more than Google (Netflix maybe?), but they're certainly above average.
Google is more generous to good performers via bonuses once you are working there, but if you have two offers in hand, you are going to find Google highly resistant to negotiating. The notion of people taking a pay cut to work at Google sounds plausible to me.
If one's goal is to maximize compensation (particularly in the short term), a Google offer is better used to get a higher paying offer at one of their competitors.
I don't think that's true. While google is by all accounts (including in my personal experience) unwilling to move significantly on base salary, they'll happily match pretty much any offer with stock from my experience (and the experience of others I've talked to).
Perhaps I dealt with a particularly nasty Google recruiter. I felt like the recruiter had misrepresented the health benefits and relocation package once I got the actual offer letter and related paperwork.
That said, from what I've seen, compensation growth at Google from everything I've seen is faster than at the other companies, which means that for someone coming in at L>3, they will likely be given greater compensation at google than elsewhere.
I'm curious as to how they misrepresented things. I was actually pleasantly surprised once I got here by how extensive the benefits were, but I'm always interested in learning more, since while I actually think that 4 google interviews is a decent way to judge someone for google, I really hate their interview/negotiation process.
How many of their projects succeed simply because they are google? Some major ones (like android) come to mind.
If this were true, Google would have crashed and burned a long time ago.
Obviously, their interview process selects for much more versatile engineers than that. Engineers who not only produce reliable and maintainable code, but who can actually come up with products that generate billions of dollars over the years.