> Maybe a bigger question is: why are these big companies letting fungible labor take such a big piece of the pie? there's a lot to dig into in this comment, b

> Maybe a bigger question is: why are these big companies letting fungible labor take such a big piece of the pie? there's a lot to dig into in this comment, but I think this is the biggest thing you are missing. the leadership of big tech companies generally does not look at revenue as a fixed-size pie to be divvied up between themselves and their subordinates. instead, they try to grow the pie as fast as possible so they can justify their own salaries and bonuses to the board. if this means paying way over market for labor, so be it. they'll keep doing it as long as they grow revenue by more than they spend on SDE salaries (modulo some organization dysfunction, of course). the point of the $300k salaries is not to hire engineers that are 3x better; it's to hire armies of engineers very quickly. this is where the absurd algo interviews come in. a large company hiring at this pace does not have the time or the manager incentive alignment to make holistic hiring decisions. some terrible engineers that test well do slip through the cracks, but they can be PIPed out before they cost too much money.