It's hard to tell the difference between "stop the bleeding" title/pay inflation and "aggressively competing for talent" inflation.
Meta is ~$2M/employee. Probably more like $1M once contractors are accounted for? But for a good person, even if the rest of the company has random issues, they can carve out a win.
Fast was like $1K/employee
Consider what that's like for some hypothetical B2B startup BlitzScaler Inc. They're betting on 3x+ growth year-over-year for next 2+ years, 2-3 year sales payback periods, etc, and is probably closer to Fast levels of revenue per employee than Meta's. But hitting $500K is hard, $2M is hard again in different ways, then again to $10M, and again to $20M+ (and increasing range depending if many sales people inflating it). That matters because many aren't there, even unicorns (!). That means, like Uber, they're burning increasing piles of money, except unlike Uber, the revenue is unlikely to be keeping pace. Fundraising buys team, and an artificial sense of fit+growth (kool-aid-drinking team + forced sales that tap out + churn.)
A cockroach team is closer to Amazon style: reinvest ~100% in growth, but don't gamble your employee's stock options.
What could be a legitimate reason for giving silly titles? If it were a startup, it would be a huge red flag for an auditor.
> Sure, come as a Senior! That's not enough? Principal it is!
Do you mean staff (E6, the level above Senior)? Also, no one is getting E6 offers 2 years out of college.
IME, F are the only ones to whip out their laptop at a house party or bar at 10PM on a Friday night because they felt an insatiable to work on some feature request; GMA may do the same when on-call, but I've never seen it otherwise.
I'm personally going the other route: Class of 2019, secured a decently sized FAANG bag (barely worked the whole time while doing it), and now I'm transitioning to a position with even fewer hours of commitment required but also lower salary. Going to focus on things I've come to find more important than money and code.
I fell for this trick once when I was younger, but never again.
As it turns out, when companies are bleeding talent and struggling to hire they suddenly find ways to pay well above market rate. You can have a fancy title, too!
We had a competitor do something similar at a prior company. I would tell candidates that we can't match their compensation numbers but to come back if things don't work out at the other company. I'd often get a message about 3-4 months later asking if the job was still available