Sometimes I think that FAANGs real power comes from their nontechnical hires. They pay top dollar for their CxOs, market strategists, domain experts, etc. With

Sometimes I think that FAANGs real power comes from their nontechnical hires. They pay top dollar for their CxOs, market strategists, domain experts, etc. With this kind of firepower, they can get along with any engineers. They just need to fill seats. The high salaries for software engineers are just to shackle their engineers with golden handcuffs so they'll stick around long-term, and not spread any secondhand strategic vision to competitors.