Until fairly recently, I worked as a SWE at a big, unsexy, enterprise corporation where tech is an unrespected cost center. Pay as a senior SWE there (and compa

Until fairly recently, I worked as a SWE at a big, unsexy, enterprise corporation where tech is an unrespected cost center. Pay as a senior SWE there (and companies like it) was probably around what a junior or lower midlevel engineer at a FAANG-like company would make. A lot of people there were working very hard not to go the extra mile or chase after a promotion, but rather to become Professional Leetcoders so that they could jump ship for a better company. I've had friends at other, similar, companies tell stories like this too. And I have to admit, I too was one of their ranks, as were many of my friends. The goal - leave the crufty enterprise world and get into FAANG, or at least a better, Silicon Valley style, tech company where you can go to work in shorts and flipflops instead of dressing up in "business casual" like a bean counter. The whole tech interview nonsense has probably created legions of similar people. They might be doing a decent job at their current workplaces, but they're certainly not going above and beyond when they can be grinding leetcode instead. However the context of this thread is Google, Meta, and other FAANG and FAANG-tier companies. I have no insight there, as the second part of this whole Professional Leetcoder thing is that once you get into such an "endgame company", you're supposed to hang up your leetcode gosu badge and work your ass off. Which is what I'm actually doing now.