It’s certainly true that senior people are unlikely to get hired at a FAANG in a senior role for their first year. Being a high achieving senior engineer is ab

It’s certainly true that senior people are unlikely to get hired at a FAANG in a senior role for their first year. Being a high achieving senior engineer is about delivering on communication and prioritization, more than anything else. It’s very hard to evaluate a prospective hire’s day-to-day willingness to communicate and prioritize, no matter how impressive their resume. If you do well, you’ll quickly get promoted, though. And the salary difference is pretty negligible, relative to RSUs, and people who think of themselves as senior can often get pretty senior RSU packages, so this distinction isn’t super relevant for total compensation.