[the_only_law]

FWIW I make similar, less pre-tax but more post-tax, though with maybe a third of the experience.

I’ve seen the comments about “just go to FAANG” and it’s one of those odd dualities I see on HN. On some threads, I see comments full of how their interviews are IQ proxies and how FAANG only hires the best or top X% so it’s not viable for most devs. On the other hand there are plenty of comments that just suggest casually walking into a FAANG job. So which is it?

[sidlls]

It's neither. Their interviews are proxies for time spent studying CS textbook trivia: a poor indicator of IQ or any other skill for that matter. It's not easy to just casually walk into, either (except for recent CS grads or experienced professionals who happen to be among the 0.1% working day-to-day on tasks requiring understanding of said trivia in depth), as it requires a lot of time devoted to study the nonsense.

[decafninja]

Luck is a big factor. I've gotten offers where I feel I shouldn't have, and I've gotten rejections that I feel I shouldn't have.

The thing is, you can adjust luck to be in your favor. While certainly nowhere near 100%, if you feel you're being paid below market, becoming a master at leetcode will probably help you tremendously in increasing your compensation whether it be at a FAANG company or some other company that will still give you a raise.

[Philip-J-Fry]

I wanna know how many people working at a FAANG are actually employing the hardcore development skills we're led to believe we need to work there. Like, surely most people are just working on pretty generic software components that the average developer could.

[decafninja]

From what I hear from my friends that got into FAANG, at least none of them seem to do.

My best friend's FAANG job sounds incredible mundane to be honest. An entire team seems to be dedicated towards working on the backend piece of what seems like a very small feature, plus another entire sister team is working on the frontend piece of same feature. Granted there is probably a level of scale involved that adds complexity, but just hearing him talk about what he and his team does makes my unsexy non-tech company work more interesting.

[CuriouslyC]

Assuming you make a baseline cut in terms of experience for the position, getting a job at a FAANG basically just boil down to a LOT of prep. Anyone can do it, if they can afford to spend 6-12 months prepping via leetcode and system design exercises.