It's not clear that many of the people you are describing would have joined a startup anyway. There's big difference in the personalities who thrive in startups and those that thrive in large bureaucracies. An alternative view is that Silicon Valley and other tech centers are increasing dominated by the latter type of person.

> An alternative view is that Silicon Valley and other tech centers are increasing dominated by the latter type of person.

Definitely possible and likely true to some extent. Smart people who don't have a particular passion and may have chosen finance/consulting in another era are considering tech.

Though I do see a lot of people move in and out of being high leadership at smaller companies/startups and into manager/director positions at FANG.

I'd go further and note that online software discussions in general seem increasingly dominated by complete beginners who couldn't care less about code except as a stepping stone to money and fame.

How this is all going to lead anywhere worth going is anyone's guess...

I think the change will have two effects. The first is the cynical one, where tons of unqualified people come into the field just for the money, write poor software, and probably don't actually enjoy their lives that much because they're not good at what they do and lack that internal satisfaction.

But, a more positive change is that there will be some high-impact multitalented genius individuals that choose to pursue tech instead of high finance or politics or something like that. Jeff Bezos left a hedge fund to start Amazon. Now he may be a ruthless son-of-a-bitch when it comes to competing, but for consumers the positive impact has been enormous. He's likely done far more good than he would have being a lifer at D.E. Shaw.

At least you're paid well to contribute to the destruction of privacy, fair elections and human rights.

what's the median age (in your estimation) of a level I director at FB? and what's "absurd amount of money" for good engineers? Something like 400 - 600K?

From my (likely poor) estimation, an internally promoted director likely has ~10 - 15 years of experience, and externally hired directors can range from that little to much much more. These are usually very talented people who could be C-suite executives at smaller companies so their compensation makes sense.

When I said "absurd amount of money" it was more of a rhetorical device, I don't actually think that its unreasonable, and yeah I meant ~500k or so.

Considering the value good engineering and leadership bring to a tech company, this pay makes perfect sense, hell it still may be lowballing the value they generate for the organization. But it is still a high amount of money for a 9-5 individual contribution job compared with other industries.

I'm more making the point that tech used to pay middlingly compared to other professional jobs (doctor/lawyer etc.), and Mechanical/Electrical engineering for the most part still do pay middlingly. I think this encouraged the talented to strike out for startups far more often as the opportunity cost of doing so was lower, especially in times with new technology waves where there was a lot more "low hanging fruit".

I'm not saying the pay is anticompetitive or a bad thing, I'm merely commenting on a trend that I've seen where startups make less and less sense for talented individual engineers and I wonder how that will affect the tech scene in the next decade.

> I'm more making the point that tech used to pay middlingly compared to other professional jobs (doctor/lawyer etc.)

Outside of SV, how is it not "middlingly"? Where can you make $500k+/year in tech working at some corporation??

Outside SV, Seattle and NYC it pretty much does still pay middlingly. But these same places that don't compete with SV on pay also often don't have an many resources for the startup oriented as well.