I've run a smart consulting business for 16 years now. I've watched over the years as many I've worked with have gone to FAANG.

There may be opportunity costs involved, but there is no way FAANG can grab all of the top talent. Some of it is going to make its own way simply because they want to write their own rules.

You don't need to grab all of the top talent, just enough to keep them from coalescing into a threat.

The few that slip by get acquir-hired in a few years.

Extremely relevant for Canadian talent pools. Bleed to SF/Bay area is real.

The other side of this is how so many people starting or running companies still dont have a realistic view of what to pay engineers.

They're pricing a budget out to rationalize an equity raise and are completely inept at what is necessary to get their highly specialized engineers.

Sure there are a lot of engineers working at noncompetitive companies making 80-180k and lower outside of the bay area.

But if you expect to spend less time on recruiting and less time on attritition for your skillset that only exists in the bay area or HFT firms, wake tf up!

What makes you think their salaries are inflated and others are not lowballing?

I meant inflated relative to the mean. In principle I agree with your sentiment.

I don't think any company can afford to employ a significant percentage of the world's tech workers. Google has 150,000 staff, and even if half of them are developers that's only about 0.25% of the number of developers globally. Employing people as a moat only works within a large city (or a few dozen large cities). It can't be done if people can work from anywhere.

They don't need to. They just need to set the market rate so that start ups can't easily hire or retain the best; they're all competing to get into FAANGs, or failing that, companies that have the coffers to be second tier. The startup is left with the people willing to take a pay cut.

What's the real pool though? Most of the world's developers are either trash compared to the standard or working in a trash environment like Europe. It's basically SEA and the US in the leagues that matter which is a much smaller pool.

I'm in Europe (geographically anyway, technically the UK isn't in Europe right now). It isn't trash but I'd gladly swap my job for a remote one that pays NY wages.

I believe you're confusing the continent Europe with the European Union. UK is certainly in Europe.

As a British person who has been living through Brexit for years now, I am acutely aware of the difference. When Brits talk about whether they're in Europe or not it's always with reference to the EU. That's the one that actually makes a difference.

Until their competitors are providing the same products for less, or they are forcibly broken up by the government.