Regarding the story of a long-established company having to adapt to FAANG/post-dotcom pay... I've seen a different response to that.
In this case, I was the prospective new hire, at a well-regarded large company. They had a large number of software developers who'd pulled off some very impressive technical accomplishments (comparing favorably to most any tech company you could think of), and had been doing so since before FAANG... In the offer, they made the level Director, even though the role was non-management hands-on technical IC. And the comp. people had also added an additional incentive program that wasn't standard for this level. I figured that might be to work around the company's pre-FAANG pay grades for software-ish people. The team, business unit, and SVP were great, and I was actually very anxious to move. But then the offer letter came from corporate, and turned out to be laden with surprise clauses (regulatory, etc.), and corporate was unable to provide copies of documents that it referenced as things to which I'd be agreeing. My decision mostly came down to the intuitive (besides the practical costs of the surprise eleventh-hour asks): feeling that I'd be at the mercy of any Kafkaesque bureaucratic accidents of a large institution, more than I think I would be at a certain larger FAANG, while the total comp. wasn't close enough to that FAANG -- so accepting would feel more like being a scared loser, than like willfully investing towards success.
Sounds like Intel's variation of paying close to FAANG might've been the way to get that new hire (despite whatever perceived big-established-company downsides there might've been), but at the cost of demoralizing the existing engineering staff who had pre-FAANG comp. (Who then might feel like the losers.)
Has this problem been solved by any long-established company that has employed top-skilled technical people since before FAANG, without paying competitively?
In this case, I was the prospective new hire, at a well-regarded large company. They had a large number of software developers who'd pulled off some very impressive technical accomplishments (comparing favorably to most any tech company you could think of), and had been doing so since before FAANG... In the offer, they made the level Director, even though the role was non-management hands-on technical IC. And the comp. people had also added an additional incentive program that wasn't standard for this level. I figured that might be to work around the company's pre-FAANG pay grades for software-ish people. The team, business unit, and SVP were great, and I was actually very anxious to move. But then the offer letter came from corporate, and turned out to be laden with surprise clauses (regulatory, etc.), and corporate was unable to provide copies of documents that it referenced as things to which I'd be agreeing. My decision mostly came down to the intuitive (besides the practical costs of the surprise eleventh-hour asks): feeling that I'd be at the mercy of any Kafkaesque bureaucratic accidents of a large institution, more than I think I would be at a certain larger FAANG, while the total comp. wasn't close enough to that FAANG -- so accepting would feel more like being a scared loser, than like willfully investing towards success.
Sounds like Intel's variation of paying close to FAANG might've been the way to get that new hire (despite whatever perceived big-established-company downsides there might've been), but at the cost of demoralizing the existing engineering staff who had pre-FAANG comp. (Who then might feel like the losers.)
Has this problem been solved by any long-established company that has employed top-skilled technical people since before FAANG, without paying competitively?