[dpark]

> * Everyone who isn't a FAANG or Frontier Lab seem to be absolutely starving for good talent.*

I think this is largely a pay gap problem. There’s a bit of prestige involved (why work for random corp’s dev dept when you could work at FAANG) but a huge part is that most those random corps are paying way less. The best talent generally goes where the money is.

[goodpoint]

It's not just pay gap. A lot of FAANGs treat employees as very disposable and fire people with an email, but at least provide learning opportunities, growth, have budget for projects... other companies can be much worse.

[jonhohle]

Maybe it’s not this way anymore, but VC backed companies played as good or better than FAANGs 10 years ago but it was a mixed bag of talent. I ended up at a place where the engineers hard largely come from a non-FAANG, but storied engineering culture that was different but had many analogous solutions to common problems.

The biggest problem with VC startups is their geographic concentration, but sometimes remote is available.

[sublinear]

I think a much better metric is the results of the compensation, not the peak dollars earned for some narrow window of time. The differences in the cost of living and local economic inflation can become that significant in the long run.

I'm not sure I would call an appetite for risk a "talent", or even a natural consequence of talent.

If we look at the average case, there are plenty of millennials now turning 40 who have higher net worth and a better work-life balance precisely because they never worked for a FAANG. Can't argue with the results of sticking around somewhere and climbing the ladder the traditional way versus enduring all the job hopping, glass ceilings, and layoffs.

[JuniperMesos]

I'm skeptical that this is true with respect to net worth, given that I have worked at both FAANG and non-FAANG companies and I know what I got paid at one vs the other.

[sokoloff]

What factor(s) would cause you to go to a non-FAANG, having experienced both?

Pay means a lot; pay doesn’t mean everything.

[__MatrixMan__]

Sounds like we could fix this if we did a better job of holding FAANG accountable for the sorry state of technology. So many needless social problems have been introduced by technology and it happened on their watch. That prestige... we could poison it.

Maybe working at FAANG should be something to be embarrassed of.

[voidfunc]

The prestige is the total comp not the company. Nobody gives a fuck you worked for Facebook or Google but they do care you made 700K doing it.

[throw1234567891]

Oh I can guarantee you there are many places where people give many fucks. Maybe you don’t because you have never reached a place where coming out of those companies is considered a fast track to whatever.

[9dev]

Yeah, maybe - but you know what one of the perks of not working for FAANG is?

Not working for FAANG.

Some people prefer having a spine over selling their integrity. There’s heaps of opportunity for doing interesting work in a less toxic environment in places other than Silicon Valley, if you accept a little less pay.