[i_am_a_peasant]

i don’t see why the size of the company one works for has to be correlated with an engineer’s skill level. i’ve seen some of the best programmers i ever met cone out of 10 years working at a small company because it happened to be closer to his kid’s school route.

[almostgotcaught]

> i don’t see why the size of the company one works for has to be correlated with an engineer’s skill level

People have such weird delusions about this. Imagine saying the same thing about the NBA vs your local pick-up games. Literally untenable.

[jokethrowaway]

I'm sure there are exceptions (and it's way more likely that the very top are in FANGs, maybe the distinguished engineers making millions per year?) but I was never particularly impressed with the level of skills of average FANGs people.

The difference in compensation between NBA and local games is millions to nothing - between FANGs and other company there is a much smaller factor and there are way more perks in some small companies than in FANGs: less politics, no PIPs, remote, low tax / low cost of living locations, no 6m to prepare for an interview, riskier equities (if that's your thing), CTO path, etc.

All my FANGs friends ended up in smaller companies after having marked their CV as ex-Apple or ex-Google.

If I were younger and I was earning less and happy to sacrifice quality of life to live in some big city, I would spend the 6m prep-time and leetcode, just to have the FANG name on my CV and charge more to other businesses later on.

[almostgotcaught]

> but I was never particularly impressed with the level of skills of average FANGs people.

People always say this and yet somehow the markets never align <shrug>

The rest is a strange digression.

[i_am_a_peasant]

Sports and programming just aren't comparable. Some finnish student wrote the linux kernel my man, while living with his parents.

[almostgotcaught]

Have you ever heard the expression "the exception that proves the rule"?

Also I love how you think the Linux kernel is valuable because Linus started it and not because millions of hours have been invested in it by other engineers (most of whom are employed by big corps).