FAANG / BigTech is the exception in almost all areas. Scale, pay, interview, just about everything. Some for the better - anyone reading HN can pass just about

FAANG / BigTech is the exception in almost all areas. Scale, pay, interview, just about everything. Some for the better - anyone reading HN can pass just about any non-BigTech (or companies trying to pretend they're BigTech) technical interview without a ton of studying beforehand, especially once they have breadth of experience. And some for the worse - BigTech pay is also the exception, the median programmer salary in the US is something like $110k. 99% of companies give you zero equity, and in my anecdotal experience only 10-20% of companies give any sort of bonus with any sort of regularity.