I may be an outlier, but I finished interviewing recently and I can give you some insights. I would say that there are plenty of jobs that pay around 200-250k

I may be an outlier, but I finished interviewing recently and I can give you some insights. I would say that there are plenty of jobs that pay around 200-250k cash for mid career anyway. (Including bonus and salary.) Usually in high growth startups. For example I interviewed with a company going into series B that offered that much in cash comp + remote, and it was a smallish team of 50. Very sane hiring process, a pair programming exercise and a bunch of walking through prev projects. Had a couple startups that I ended up canceling with just b/c I got an offer I liked from someone else, but I'd assume it's the same. If you don't like algo questions some high paying companies like Stripe have alternative processes too. Other public startups, like Spotify, which pay about that much and have a pretty reasonable process compared to FAANG. Easier algo questions, less toxicity in hiring. I will caution you for my anecdata, I have some FAANG experience out of college and I passed multiple FAANG processes, as well as working for an HFT in school doing backofficey work. So maybe since I was well prepared for interviews + had some branding they were willing to pay higher than usual for me. If you or anyone else in the thread wants to chat about it feel free to email/dm me :)