But either way, not everyone can work for FAANG, so I think looking at the overall picture is fair.

I'm pretty confident even with 20 years of experience and I can't even get a FAANG interview (let alone pass it), I'm just not their type.

The levels.fyi median seems to be on total comp.

The Robert Half data seems more likely to be accurate.

If you want one, I've never had the impression that getting an interview was the hard part. I participated in Google Code Jam maybe 9 years ago, passed either 0 or 1 rounds (there's a "qualification round" which I definitely passed, and later a "round 1" which I have a feeling I probably didn't pass), and every so often they offer me an interview unprompted because of that.

I did mediocre on the interviews, they were undecided on whether to hire me or not. They sent in a take home problem. I only spent a few hours on it, but easily could’ve spent weeks perfecting the solution.

Anyways, if I had 1) prepared for the interviews and 2) spent the entire weekend on the take home project, I probably would’ve passed.

And even though I didn’t get the offer, they still ping me about every six months to see if I want to apply again.

Just try applying and see what happens!

With that said, I think it is because at the time the Boston office was mostly specialists and I'm a generalist. I'm also not from a top 10 school in a city filled with top-10 schools which didn't help, I'm sure.

But that was years ago. Maybe I'd have better luck these days.

People say this a lot, but Google is pretty explicit that they decide whether to hire you first, and only then consider where they might put you.