[zests]

It feels like there are two classes of engineers in the US. One class of engineers makes 60k-120k and the other makes 150k-500k.

Is this just a really well kept secret? I don't really see many engineers trying to migrate from the first class to the second class. I'd expect most software engineers would jump through hoops at the prospect of doubling their salary.

[borroka]

For every job that it's open in one of the FAANG, recruiters get thousands of applications. It sounds like many are trying, but the vast majority never gets a call back. Others cannot pass the interview. Others again are not interested in working in a very demanding environment.

I worked at a FAANGs, now I work in lower-tier tech company. I make 3/4 (low-ish upper tier) of what I used to make, I work 1/8 of the hours I used to work, work stress is non-existent. Many people, many reasons.

[Mandatum]

Weird, it was the opposite for me. Went from 60 hours in consultancies and low tier to 30ish at FAANGish. Remote probably helped with COVID, but the output is consistent.

[bradlys]

$300k at 5-10hrs/week is likely to be obscenely obscure and not a good reference point for anyone.

Yours would be way more desirable than the FAANG stuff. People could moonlight for your job easily…

[lapaz17]

Omg. Could you share your company in private?

[daniel-thompson]

I did it a few years ago.

For me, the former type of job required very little actual work. It was comfortable. It was easy. It paid well enough for a single young person. My nights and weekends were free to pursue other interests, some of which were very time-consuming (e.g. flying helicopters part-time in the military).

The big turning point for me was having kids. The inherent danger of flying caused me to leave the reserves. The increased monthly budget required for kid-raising got me out of my comfort zone. I looked for a new job for the first time in 10+ years. My TC now is double what it was when I started that process 2.5 years ago and I'm well into the latter category. Partly that's due to moving to a name-brand company. Partly it's just a great market for SWEs. Partly it's years of 3 - 5% COLAs that made me fall behind market rates.

Switching jobs is hard mentally & emotionally, especially if you're basically comfortable already. I suspect that's why many people don't do it.

[eldavido]

I think this is a big part of it. I've worked in Silicon Valley ~10yrs and I'm surprised how little actual work people do at these 60-80k jobs.

It really isn't comparable. The way SV people work, the expectations, level of responsibility, selectivity in hiring, and sometimes hours/stress, are of a kind only found in law or medicine elsewhere.

[theflyinghorse]

> Is this just a really well kept secret

It's very hard. Not having FANG/unicorns on your resume probably contributes massively to this. FANG style interviews are a skill of their own - I recently had a 6 hours of interviews back to back with Amazon and it was a mix of pretty tough technical questions and very specific behavioral questions. Even with practice solving sole of the question was very hard. For instance, I solved a DP question in a top down and interviewer asked me to then solve it bottom up for him in the remaining 5 minutes. You can't do this without a solid amount of practice.

[trav4225]

Yeah, personally, I constantly receive calls from FAANGs for interviews, but I pass on them all. My current lack of free time to work on interview prep is the sole reason. I almost feel like it's impossible to find the time to prep without quitting my current job first... :-/

What's always been a little baffling to me, though, is how easily these companies hire fresh grads. I have several friends that walked straight into FAANG jobs right out of school with little more than a couple quick phone interviews. One recruiter told me that the bar is lower for fresh grads because they can be more easily molded into the company culture.

[whymauri]

From the people I've talked to, they enjoy the WLB and location of their job enough to not hop.

[kyawzazaw]

I think people wrong associate high pay with bad WLB at top paying tech companies

[cyrux004]

Correct, this what I understand. Before the remote workplace, they were just too comfy in their location to think about locating to the limited tech cities where these salaries are being paid

[prezjordan]

I worked at a non-profit with a lot of happy ex-FAANG people that wanted to do some social good for a while. It definitely happens!

EDIT: (I just answered the inverse of your question didn't I?) People definitely grind leetcode for a FAANG gig after working elsewhere.

[rawtxapp]

Anecdotally, it's either they can't relocate because of reason x,y,z (family usually) or they can't pass the interviews for those highly paid positions (or some people just aren't pursuing money above everything else).

[908B64B197]

> I don't really see many engineers trying to migrate from the first class to the second class.

I don't think they can in the first place. It's like law, where compensation is highly bimodal.

[sxp]

https://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/ covers this well.

This skew is not obvious to people outside Silicon Valley, but it's discussed more now that sites like levels.fyi are providing data. Even more shocking is the split between SV/NYC/SEA salaries and the rest of the world. When the Google internal Salary Spreadsheet was created, people were amazed and the difference in salaries between LON/EU SWEs and US SWEs given that both groups are equally skilled.

Getting a FAANG job is hard, but it's worth it for the ability to retire after a decade of hard work compared to working for multiple decades at a normal tech company.

[reidjs]

Equally skilled at engineering, but is there something special USA engineers bring to the table to warrant a higher salary? Easier to work with? More business sense? Longer hours/less holidays? Better understanding of the target market?

Don’t get me wrong. it might just be that life’s not fair.