But I bet you dollars to doughnuts that if I told any of them that they could double their compensation by “grinding LeetCode” they would trade the “equity” in a private company that statistically won’t amount to anything for real stock being in their brokerage account every six months.
As far as being “greedy”. Are you running a charity?
Students might know starting salaries, but maybe not know just how huge the income difference can get in a few years. Nor understand how adversely the relative difference can affect their quality of life.
> If you want a job at FAANG badly enough to suffer it,
I mean, you have to agree, for a lot (if not most) people, the ROI is massive.
You can't possibly know that for sure. Are you making that judgment based on what candidates tell you during interviews? Because the meta-game of a job interview is literally just figuring out what the interviewer wants to hear and then saying it.
The vast majority of people I’ve hired want to be happy, and I have completely qualitative conclusions from having hired such developers for decades: It works well for everyone.
If you want a job at FAANG badly enough to suffer it, go for it. But don’t ask me validate “that’s what everyone is doing”. It’s not — you’ve been sold a bill of goods, or you’re greedy. Either way, you be you.