It means they assume you want to keep that high salary, and won't waste their time calling you back if their target compensation isn't competitive with FAANG, because going through an interview process only to have the candidate reject the offer isn't productive for anyone.

One more reason companies should post the salary range. If someone with FAANG is still applying, that means they're willing to work for that range.

> If someone with FAANG is still applying, that means they're willing to work for that range.

Close but not quite. It's more like:

> If someone with FAANG is still applying, it appears they're willing to work for that range.

When I'm willing to go through the job interview process and say no to an offer I don't like, I completely ignore the salary range. I'll get the interviewer and team to love me and then just decline if they won't go above their range. Or I'll take it because they've convinced me the job will be enjoyable enough to offset the lower salary.

Plenty of things in life are flexible if you ask. But plenty of things aren't flexible even when you ask. Sometimes, I'm willing to waste my time to find out which is which.

Sure, but the recruiter isn't willing to waste their time to find out if you deem their role good enough to accept something lower, or if you are going to make them go to bat to spend more money on you. It is better for their goals to move on to someone who is actually seeking something within the target compensation's budget.

Yes, except my comment and the comment I replied to had nothing to do with your point.

I replied to:

> If someone with FAANG is still applying, that means they're willing to work for that range.

Oh you would be surprised what people think. They think you will change your ability to pay almost just as frequently.

> If someone with FAANG is still applying, that means they're willing to work for that range.

But even that doesn't mean as much as you might think. Someone might be willing to take a pay cut because they're in dire need of work. But will they be happy with that pay rate in a year or two?

It just means they're trying to get a counter offer to improve their negotiating ability.

From the point of view of someone who has had to hire in the past, here's how it would go in my head:

Oh, this person has worked at Google (for example). Our compensation is good, but not Google-good. I could look that the rest of this resume, if this person is a good fit, have an initial 40-minutes meeting with them to discuss compensation, start the hiring process, and then they will reject us because we're lower than they are accustomed to, or because they have found something that pays more.

Or I could move this resume to the reject pile and move on to the next candidate.

Oh my, look at the time.

This.

Also, there's the issue of fit. Plenty of companies don't operate like FAANG companies do. If a candidate is FAANG-heavy, it raises a serious question about whether or not they'd fit into a non-FAANG company.

Any resume including a recent Microsoft QA position is an automatic reject for me. Microsoft does not hire technical people, they hire robots who need their tests written for them.

The nice thing about this thread is it seems there are lots of little gems that help decide where I'd definitely like to not work in the future.

Yes, this, and I know the problems we're solving are not as interesting as what anyone at Google is doing, so I assume they would be bored and only stay until they find something more interesting. So, pass. FAANG kind of traps you - you can drop out of that world into a scrappy startup, but not boring stable corporate dev.

It means you're set for a very specific type of job in a very specific industry. If I'm launching a start up and you showed up to be employee #4, unless you were #4 at the FAANG or are in your late 30's or older, I'm probably not going to hire you.

The fact is that FAANGs do things in a very particular manner and on small, focused teams. That's the opposite of how start ups work and applying most of the managerial "skills" that are in place at FAANGs are a good way to apply a ton of unnecessary bureaucracy to a company that doesn't even have an HR department yet.

"Founder is formerly Google and Facebook!" makes me stay very very far away from the company because outside of the VC world the reason those words have power are red flags.

> or are in your late 30's or older, I'm probably not going to hire you.

This sounds illegal in the US.

(Also, it's the opposite of the usual illegal ageism we see in post-dotcom tech companies.)

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act forbids only discrimination against workers over age 40 in the US. It does not prohibit age-based discrimination against a worker who is under 40. Nor does it prohibit discriminating in favor of a worker over 40.

More generally, discrimination in employment is legal by default, unless a specific protected class is created by a specific law. Many classes of discrimination are legal, such as against smokers or obesity.

States and localities may have more restrictions than at the federal level, of course.

To my knowledge in the US "40 and older" is a protected class but "under 40" is not.

Ageism is a weird one from a discrimination standpoint. My understanding is that it's specifically defined (in the US) to prevent discrimination against those over 40

As an engineer in my 50s I've never personally been on the receiving end of ageism, but I've definitely seen extremely smart young engineers passed over for opportunities because they were deemed too young/inexperienced

And a lot of times that can be true, being young and gifted is amazing, but doesn't overcome years of experience in the trenches. Sure you may be able to work a 24 year old brilliant dev 80 hours a week and the 54 year old may want to leave by 6 every day, but if you hire right you'll get the same amount of work out of them, the 54 year old will just need a lot less effort to get to the same place.

I'm using age as a level of experience here. There may be 28 year olds I'd look at but only if they've been in management for multiple years with multiple teams under their belt, not just a single dev group that they got shuffled around on.

Discriminating against how old someone is is illegal, not usually how young, but this isn't discrimination because of an uncontrollable attribute, it's requiring experience outside of what being a team lead at a FAANG would normally afford you.