the coolest thing "the big tech" was able to do is convince a whole bunch ridiculously smart people that they only place they can make $500k is with them. I personally (I am just one person) know more than 10 people not working for big tech making (some significantly) north of $500k as SWEs and doing awesome sh*t (unlike I would un-intelligently guess most of big tech employees)

Sure, there are some jobs that match your description, likely for people that can brand themselves "AI engineers" for a rocketship company like OpenAI. Their number is absolutely miniscule compared to the number of big-tech jobs.

Yeah, I think another problem is that TooBigTech is able to pay insanely for... what do they bring to society again? Was it social media and ads? Anyway, all that desirable stuff /s.

>Totally, if you're willing to trade in your half-million or more annual compensation for $150k or less.

I will take 60k at this point. I've been living ono half of that for almost 2 years now.

I have no idea how anyone is navigating this job market. Maybe it's just 10x worse and most people here are in the Bay area that's a tiny bit more shielded from this.

>Their number is absolutely miniscule compared to the number of big-tech jobs.

give it another year of layoffs. We'll get there.