Right? Make 300k for 2-3 years then quit and just go back and get another degree without needing to work outside of it whatsoever. Sounds amazing.

Would be fun to try your luck

I was like that until I read levels.fyi data and blind app and gave it a shot

Worse they can say is no

There's a very strange phenomenon in US cities where it seems every salary is slowly converging to the $110-140k range. People who used to make $80k for borderline unskilled work (cold calling to sell business internet, for example) are now in the $110-120k range but people who were already at $120k have barely had any upward mobility in their pay.

Even at large "boring" corporate developer jobs that don't pay a fraction of the FAANG salaries, it seems the decent engineers either escaped this trap (promoted to $150k+) or have settled into the $130-140k quicksand with little to no annual raise.