>If my choices are Amazon, or a bunch of lesser known, less prestigious, or lesser paying companies, I'd take the shot at Amazon and do whatever possible to last at least a year so I could put that Amazon name on my resume for future prospects.

I don't disagree with your assessment, but this illustrates just how broken the software labor market is. If you'd work in a dumpster fire culture as a capable developer just for resume padding to open doors, something is wrong with software labor and hiring (which, there's a lot wrong, this is but one more example of how perverse the market is).

A lesser known, less prestigious, and lower pay position shouldn't effect your future opportunities if the market is really selecting on talent that it claims it is. Now if your lesser known/prestigious location happens to have you doing CRUD work circa 2000, then sure, but that's definitely not the case for a lot of places that simply can't pay the rates Amazon can afford to pay.

Generally, compensation is pretty closely tied to revenue per employee. Not always, but it’s a pretty good rule of thumb.

Companies that can’t afford to pay FAANG wages, typically don’t have FAANG productivity levels. Productivity in software is closely tied to how effective the technology and processes are. Most of those factors are fairly portable across companies.

So, I would say that an engineer working at a high total comp firm is likely acquiring more valuable human capital. Not always, but it’s a pretty good rule of thumb. If a company can afford to pay engineers $300k, they’re probably doing something right, in a way the company who pays $75k isn't.

> Generally, compensation is pretty closely tied to revenue per employee. Not always, but it’s a pretty good rule of thumb.

I don't know of any theoretical reason that would be true nor see any evidence of that in practice.

In microeconomics, it’s a pretty foundational tenet that wages normalize to marginal worker productivity.

I don't remember that from any of my microeconomic courses. I mean, maybe you mean society wide (aka macro), but that's only as average worker productivity rises, and has nothing to do with particularly efficient single firms.

Simple thought experiment. Firms will continue to hire until wage = marginal productivity .. otherwise, you leave money on the table. Usual BS assumptions on perfect information/competition, cetrus paribus, and all that stuff.

In your simple thought experiment, why are wages going up for that one firm? You're hiring more people, not raising the wages of the existing people. And I'm not sure why you think unit economics apply to software with it's almost 100% fixed costs.

If you can pass Amazon's interview you can pass any other fang's interview which will give you the same CV prestige with probably less hassle. The only people I know who went to Amazon picked it just because it was the only fang they passed at and they didn't want to bother doing another round of interviews or wait for the cooldown period.

Sure, other fangs have similar internal politics nightmares - but Amazon seems to be consistently the worst.

I failed Amazon like three times in a row (along with other smaller companies). This last year I expanded my search and got into Facebook and Google, despite failing Amazon again.

Plus there are lots of smaller companies that are as prestigious within the valley as Amazon. I mean, if you had to hire someone, would you really consider ex-Amazon superior to Uber, Snapchat, Microsoft, some random startup, etc.?

If I were hiring someone I might actually discriminate against Amazon because I'd be afraid of absorbing some of their culture.

Amazon's culture is nothing compared to the stories I've heard about Microsoft's Mac software teams. I can't repeat them all but supposedly they weren't allowed to read any sample code including Stack Overflow questions.

I find that really hard to believe. What would be the motivation behind that policy, and how would it be enforced?

I'd rank Uber, Snapchat, Microsoft, etc. at least on par with Amazon in terms of resume brand name recognition/prestige. They're also probably at least as difficult to get into.

But "random startups" that no one knows about? Probably preferable to have Amazon.

How common is it for a candidate to be able to get offers from multiple FAANGs?

I would imagine it isn't common, though I could certainly be wrong.

The FAANG engineers that I know personally all seem to have cracked FAANG with a lot of difficulty, and claim that odds are they would fail if they had to re-interview for the same position.

Common among the cognitive elites, but the rest of us are lucky to get one. For me, Amazon was the one. And the fact that people think the bar is lower (and therefore I’m stupid) has made me cry myself to sleep before.

Damn dude, I've seen you talk like this a few times over the last few months.

You gotta chill a bit. Your intelligence doesn't determine your self worth.

I'll second what ZephyrBlue said:

- you aren't defined by who your employer is - your intelligence isn't defined by who your employer is - you can't control what other people say or think about you - you're worth a hell of a lot more than what you do or what you make per year (emotionally, intellectually, spiritually) - life is random, do the best you can and don't hurt yourself doing so

At the risk of sounding morbid, we're all just apes on a flying rock trying to figure out what existence means to us. Reach out if you need help, there's nothing wrong with that.

Stay safe my friend.

Getting into the FANG interview process doesn't seem that complicated, recruiters reach out to most developers / graduates on LinkedIn. Passing it requires learning a specific set of skills.

I would say the bar is pretty much the same for all FANGs. If you were able to pass Amazon you could have passed Facebook or Apple. I see people that apply to multiple FANGS tend to pass some of them. Once you put in the work to learn those exercises (which is a lot, don't get me wrong), failing them or passing them becomes a matter of luck (the right set of exercises, the right interviewer).

As to how this translates to intelligence - I personally don't care if a candidate is able to pass a FANG interview or not (I've seen plenty of bad employees who were FANGs or ex-FANGs and plenty of geniuses as well), but I definitely will think of them as being driven individuals who achieved what they set up to do.

Incidentally the best employees who made a difference in the companies I've worked at were, incidentally, never ex-FANGs, just talented individuals who decided to put in the work.

> If you were able to pass Amazon you could have passed Facebook or Apple

I don't know, I failed Facebook several times and never got an interview at Apple. Getting an interview at most companies isn't that hard, but with Amazon on the resume I'm out of the game for companies like top trading firms and Stripe, Airbnb etc. I think I simply don't have the intelligence to do so. I'm sure some people have the ability to get offers after doing thousands of leetcode problems but I've never met them - everyone I know that's successful has only done a handful and passed their interviews without any trouble.

I've put in the work, but I've gotten nothing out of it. It's hard not to be discouraged by that.

Curious as to why you think having Amazon on your resume is a dealbreaker to some companies? Is this something that is known?

Amazon is probably a better name to have on your resume than the vast majority of other companies out there. I'd imagine you'd instantly be considered higher at first glance than someone with say, JP Morgan, or Lockheed Martin, or IBM, or any number of no-name startups on their resume.

I am not sure why but I always assumed Amazon was easier to get into than Google, Facebook and Netflix. Microsoft/LinkedIn is probably same difficulty as Amazon. Just anecdotes and people I know I guess.

Personally, I'd work for Amazon and already be looking elsewhere the moment I signed up, given how random it seems in terms of being fired. They're going to fire you anyway.

I actually did that, kept interviewing about every 8-12 months until last September or so. The problem is none of my offers were as high as Google new grad offers (all less than $200k, though one had a $175k base) so I didn’t take any. This was from 4 startups and Citadel. Seems like being inferior has its own severe monetary costs….

"the kind of rockstar ninja wizard that can glean multiple offers from all sorts of top tech companies"

I don't think this is a helpful stereotype. I know lots of these people and they're quite normal. "Rockstar ninja wizard" makes these jobs sound a lot more unattainable than they really are.

I mean, as someone who has yet to crack one FAANG (or similar level company) offer, a FAANG engineer is someone that I look up to. But my friends and ex-colleagues who did crack FAANG did so with difficulty, and they got rejected from all but the one company that did extend an offer. They all say if they were to re-interview at their companies (or another FAANG), odds are they'd be rejected.

So someone who can get offers from multiple FAANGs is someone that I would seriously consider to be on a whole another level, i.e. a wizard, for lack of a better term.

If you work at a top-tier company, you'll meet lots of people who can get multiple offers from top-tier companies. They are bright, but usually not geniuses. And they are often a bit obsessed with puzzles :)

FAANG interviewing has nothing to do with your skill as an engineer. FAANG interviews only evaluate how good you are at jumping through the specific hoops they require for their special interview process. For Amazon, it's all about how well you can bullshit your way around the LPs.

It's the professional equivalent of "being good at taking multiple choice exams". But just because someone got 100s on every biology exam in high school doesn't mean they are an expert in biology, just that they are a good test taker.

If you want to look up to someone because they are actually a good engineer, then that's great. But don't look up to someone just because they are a good test taker. And don't look down on yourself just because you are a bad test taker. Taking tests has so little relevance to how good you actually are as an engineer. Amazon is chock-full of completely mediocre engineers, and also rejects plenty of actual engineering wizards.

I'd argue FAANG offers are like college admissions, probably a good 40% of the applicant pool likely qualifies for the role and can succeed in it, but only 3-4% of the pool gets the offer

You can argue the numbers and there's probably a top tier of people who are no brainers. But, yeah, in general at least for elite university admissions, they could probably toss most or all of the admitted pile in the trash, figure out who to admit from the rest of the pile, and the world would keep on turning just fine.