It’s the same reason high school students apply to Stanford and MIT; there are amazing programs everywhere but top-level universities carry prestige and may have higher quality opportunities.

I did cover those points. As I said, the prestige is misguided (in the case of FAANG) and you don't need to go down the FAANG route to have access to higher quality opportunities.

Those companies sure want you to believe what you're claiming because it means they get the first bite of the cherry but the reality is very different (from my experience anyway).

> The prestige is misguided (in the case of FAANG)

I strongly disagree, and I'm not sure why you would say that. I've heard that working at Google is a golden stamp on your resume, and you will be able to easily get a job at any other company. You'll probably even be able to skip the coding challenges in any future interviews.

> You'll probably even be able to skip the coding challenges in any future interviews.

Is this speculative or does this actually happen?

As a team leader I'm involved in hiring and I certainly wouldn't treat one applicant any different from another regardless of their previous postings nor experience (except when I'm headhunting someone I've previously worked with). My own experience interviewing has taught me it's easy for people to put stuff down on CVs (eg they might have legitimately worked at Google but through an acquisition rather than hired by; or not even with the team they suggest they have). So I would consider short-cutting part of the interview process in the way you described to be grossly negligent.

I don't dispute that your CV is more likely to get short listed however you can certainly still sell yourself without having FAANG on there.

My general point is that while I don't disagree that having FAANG on your CV will undoubtedly look good, however a good engineer shouldn't have any problems getting awesome jobs with or without FAANG. Thus is the prestige attached to FAANG really equatable in the real world or is it perhaps disproportionately hyped?

Maybe this is just one of those differences between how people are hired in SV (where I haven't worked) and London (where I do work)?

Purely speculative, but I would hope that it is true. I think it would also depend on your role at Google.

I think it would be pretty rude and unnecessary if you asked a high-level Google employee to do a whiteboard algorithm puzzle, or a take-home assignment where they have to build a little todo list app. Especially if they are a Distinguished Engineer or a Google Fellow. I don't know where the cutoff is exactly, but at a certain point no-one should ask you to do any more coding puzzles. You'll still go through interviews, but they shouldn't need to test your basic programming skills.

I agree if you're hiring someone with a notable reputation then you wouldn't run them through the same kind of coding challenges but I'd expect that would be the case regardless of whether they had worked at FAANG, open source, start ups or wherever else. Thus we come back to my point that a decent engineer shouldn't have any problems getting hired regardless of having FAANG on their CV. What I was wondering was whether having FAANG (rather than reputation) allowed an applicant to shortcut parts of the interview process.

To be honest, judging from your last post I suspect our opinions aren't that far apart. :)

outside of Silicon valley... maybe.

In Silicon Valley, everyone knows that it is fake prestige and the fact that you worked for a FAANG doesn't really mean anything. I both know excellent and mediocre candidates coming out of FAANGs. It literally carry no information besides the fact that you are probably more attracted to prestige.

Oh, that's interesting! I think "fake prestige" might be a bit harsh, and I'm sure that doesn't apply to the very senior engineers who earn > $500k per year.

A few years ago I was contacted by a Google recruiter, but I realized that it was going to be a very junior SRE role, so I wasn't interested in that. I could have put Google on my resume, but that probably wouldn't have been very impressive.

I mean, money is money.

It still makes sense to work at one of these places that pay twice as much as everyone else.

Do they though? I think that they majority of people at FAANGs are actually taking a salary cut compared to what they could get somewhere else. (anecdotal data from all my friends interviewing).

It is simple offer and demand. The supposed prestige of FAANGs also mean that more people wants to get in and unless they really want you, they would be stupid to overpay you.

You can have higher quality opportunities everywhere; it’s just that it’s often easier at those companies. Just like going to certain universities means it’s easier to find professors who lead their field, recruiters from better companies, and more access to be with smart people.

But is it actually any easier given you have to also factor in going through their painful recruitment process and actually getting employed by them in the first place?

Maybe my things are different in London than they are in SV but I've never had any issues. Quite the opposite in fact; I've been turning awesome jobs down.

Don't forget a lot of it comes down to compensation as well. It's not unusual for FAANG company to pay 2x more compared to another public company for example.

That really depends on your basis for comparison because there will be a lot of variation between wages for different jobs within the same company; let alone different jobs in competing companies. It can even vary depending on how good your recruiter is, how generous the management for the vacant position are, the type of job that's on off and how important that position is to that company (are they desperate? Is it an area of strategic growth? etc).

Anecdotally I've really not seen the 2x trend you described and I have spent a fair amount of time negotiating peoples wages. Plus engineers who are really concerned about maximizing their income will generally turn to contracting rather than permanent work anyway (at least that is the case in London where contracting is common place).

Suffice to say, I'm pretty unconvinced that FAANG pay people twice what any other business would. Maybe if you're looking for jobs outside of tech hubs (like smaller towns away from expensive cities) but other tech firms in London (and SV I'd guess?) would have to pay competitive wages else risk not attracting any talent.

I've seen total compensation packages of $100k for senior engineers in SF/SV before (really low side), FAANG comparatively would pay $350k+. There are plenty of public companies in SF/SV that pay senior engineers $175k total compensation.

I also want to clarify that I didn't mean they always pay 2x over the competition, I meant that it's not unusual for them to. Also when I say FAANG - I kind of included similar large companies (Microsoft, LinkedIn, Salesforce, etc). There's also a lot of large companies that come close, maybe 80-90% of FAANG pay.

>Plus engineers who are really concerned about maximizing their income will generally turn to contracting rather than permanent work anyway

I think it's pretty difficult to get steady contract work that pays more than what FAANG does. I charged $175/hr when I used to contract and it was decently steady, but that only comes out to around the same I would be making at a FAANG minus all the perks/benefits. Also when you get to higher seniority levels, your pay at FAANGs start to reach into the 6 or 700's, meaning you'd need a contract rate of $300+/hr to compete.

Usually when companies need that high level of technical architecture/leadership - they'd normally hire someone full-time rather than use a contractor, so it would probably be difficult charging that rate while getting steady work.

> Also when I say FAANG - I kind of included similar large companies (Microsoft, LinkedIn, Salesforce, etc).

Ahhh I was including those sort of companies (baring Microsoft) as part of my counterexample. If the discussion was "any large / reputable organisation" then my comments would have differed a little.

In any case it sounds like London is very different to SV. It's very common for senior engineers to contracting and that's precisely because the difference in pay between permanent and contracting is night and day (the polar opposite to what you were describing in SV)

> FAANG - I kind of included similar large companies (Microsoft, LinkedIn, Salesforce, etc)

FAMLANGS