The software engineer hiring market is very trimodal: There are companies that hire at average salaries. Usually targeting Radford database @ 50% or whatever n

The software engineer hiring market is very trimodal: There are companies that hire at average salaries. Usually targeting Radford database @ 50% or whatever numbers they think they can get away with paying. The next cluster of companies pay well but not at FAANG levels. They pay somewhere around 80-90th percentile of salary data. They collect all of the best employees who either can't, won't, or don't want to get FAANG jobs. Then the long tail of FAANG salaries occupies something like the 95th-99th percentile of salaries. These are the numbers you see on the levels.fyi homepage. HN tends to over-emphasize the FAANG level salaries, but there are a lot of companies in the middle bucket that pay much better than average. You might have to network and work to find them, though. Staying at average or below-average companies too long can actually make your resume less attractive over time, so you have to put in some work to break out of the rut and into the higher paying companies.