It’s because they get a lot of money. It’s that simple. I don’t know if people know how much facebookers make because if they did they’d start to riot.
Can we cut the pretense and just admit it’s about the fact that you’re showered with money and the high prestige? No judgement, I’d do it if I was an elite too.
You’re at Google now right? You people think anybody not at Google is an idiot.
The reality is Amazon is extremely competently run given its size. The pace of innovation is astonishing. We might not be ubermensch but we get the job done, and we are trusted by more people in this country than either Google or Facebook are.
Yet again, the tech elites get lionization for doing barely anything and would get them fired at a "real" company. How long do normal people have to listen to these folks as if they're inherently superior?
>> Seriously, it's the only decision that makes sense if one has the chops to get into one of those places.
I don't apparently
> I conclude those engineers have less prestige until they stay with those employers
Well, I appreciate your honesty - when I tell most people about how I make ~$150k at one of those companies they usually claim they don't look down on me when I've always maintained they secretly do. Thanks for clearing it up.
I hope my life isn't forever ruined by my inability to get into FB/G/top startups out of undergrad. I prepared for years but never got past the onsites. Hopefully someday I'll be able to gain the respect of people like you.
Total compensation obviously because FB stock is liquid. New grad salary is in the $110-115k range at FB. I know a few companies that do pay it or more base (2Sigma, Snowflake Computing and Jane Street come to mind).
I had offers for $130k base, $130k base + equity and $130k base + bonus and those were considered to be below average by most of my peers.
Anecdotally most of my friends didn't even apply to internships/FT at Uber after their reputation got tarnished. Uber used to be my dream company, but after Fowler and their new grad pay started to go down I never even applied.
>Is it possible that someone smarter than you doesn’t want to work at Facebook?
It's definitely possible, but they'd probably be working at another top tech company or finance company (think Citadel, Google, Jane Street) or starting their own company instead.
Few comments on this because I think about this quite a bit.
1) I always read these articles and sigh. Seems like they only focus on 2 elite tech companies at the expense of all the others while only interviewing students at the #1 CS school in the country. I feel like a 2nd class citizen in the industry because of it. When will the normal people be heard?
2) I'm kind of surprised they listed a $140k starting pay. That's pretty low for new grads in the industry and very low for Facebook.
3) I think it requires an immense amount of privilege to say no to a company for relatively trivial reasons (you're probably not going to be working on product code if you don't want to) that pays as much as Facebook does, especially given the $75k signing bonus on the table for interns. I think any discussion about this on the student level has to start with this. Any comparison to the defense industry is silly because defense pays significantly less than big tech.