That is not true. Plenty of people who love their craft (systems for instance), join Google to work with and learn from experienced people. It's almost a kind of apprenticeship in design and architecture that most fledgling startups can't provide. Believe it or not, it is okay to love your craft and expect to be paid. It's not zero sum. In fact I'd say many startup new grads lose out on code reviews and architecture tips by senior people.

Your response feels "black OR white" to me while there are nuances.

> Believe it or not, it is okay to love your craft and expect to be paid. It's not zero sum

I do believe it. Just not the majority of today's fresh-grad that has the attitude.

FAANG these days demand you to go over rigorous Leetcode and System Design practices (mostly having to do with high-level scaling architecture and not CODE level which where most of the craft exist unless we changed the definition of craft). Some people have to spend months training themselves in Leetcode because they really really really want that high-paying job in top brand companies.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but I'm associating "craft" with writing code, learning best practices, or building products regardless the environment/situation. Not grinding Leetcode HARD problems trapping water 3D: https://leetcode.com/problems/trapping-rain-water-ii/

Gone are the days where companies hire OSS contributors because they're good at a specific domain.

> In fact I'd say many startup new grads lose out on code reviews and architecture tips by senior people.

I think you might conclude that startups == mid-size companies like Airbnb and Dropbox? Feels like it's either FAANG or startups while there are middle ground of just about different size of companies with varying years of existence.

You are blaming the players instead of the game. It's not their fault that they have to do that. If that gets them a good life. That doesn't mean there aren't people who genuinely care about their craft and want to be better architects. I used to work on the Windows kernel, my manager said "no one ends up on this team by mistake ". That's why systems (infra / embedded etc ) have a higher rate of people who truly enjoy it joining. Because if you don't it's going to be a hard time.

I'm not blaming the players but as an observer, I'm merely sharing my experience working for one of the BigCos for a few years and seeing the "trends" in both Blind and in the office.

> It's not their fault that they have to do that. If that gets them a good life.

No complain here. Good for them.

> That doesn't mean there aren't people who genuinely care about their craft and want to be better architects.

Minorities. Unlike the past.

> That's why systems (infra / embedded etc ) have a higher rate of people who truly enjoy it joining.

I'm on Infra. Most of my peers who are working on Infra are older people (35-40+ years old) with purpose. Most younger folks prefer "mobile" or "app" teams.

I know what "craft" means.

That's kind of what I figure, though I didn't articulate that super well. My dream used to be working for Google, but it never really occured to me that it would pay substantially more than anywhere else. It was more that I'd met clever people at conferences that were also down to earth and working on products that had to scale, and consequently had interesting impact.