Anecdotally I've really not seen the 2x trend you described and I have spent a fair amount of time negotiating peoples wages. Plus engineers who are really concerned about maximizing their income will generally turn to contracting rather than permanent work anyway (at least that is the case in London where contracting is common place).
Suffice to say, I'm pretty unconvinced that FAANG pay people twice what any other business would. Maybe if you're looking for jobs outside of tech hubs (like smaller towns away from expensive cities) but other tech firms in London (and SV I'd guess?) would have to pay competitive wages else risk not attracting any talent.
I also want to clarify that I didn't mean they always pay 2x over the competition, I meant that it's not unusual for them to. Also when I say FAANG - I kind of included similar large companies (Microsoft, LinkedIn, Salesforce, etc). There's also a lot of large companies that come close, maybe 80-90% of FAANG pay.
>Plus engineers who are really concerned about maximizing their income will generally turn to contracting rather than permanent work anyway
I think it's pretty difficult to get steady contract work that pays more than what FAANG does. I charged $175/hr when I used to contract and it was decently steady, but that only comes out to around the same I would be making at a FAANG minus all the perks/benefits. Also when you get to higher seniority levels, your pay at FAANGs start to reach into the 6 or 700's, meaning you'd need a contract rate of $300+/hr to compete.
Usually when companies need that high level of technical architecture/leadership - they'd normally hire someone full-time rather than use a contractor, so it would probably be difficult charging that rate while getting steady work.
Ahhh I was including those sort of companies (baring Microsoft) as part of my counterexample. If the discussion was "any large / reputable organisation" then my comments would have differed a little.
In any case it sounds like London is very different to SV. It's very common for senior engineers to contracting and that's precisely because the difference in pay between permanent and contracting is night and day (the polar opposite to what you were describing in SV)
FAMLANGS
