Before these companies where FAANG most of them were small, crazy startups that were able to easily acquire talent because tech was pretty boring at the time. You could pay market rates, but give someone an exciting project and they'd join you. That allowed all of these companies to completely disrupt the market. Having disrupted the market they are no longer interested in this happening again.
The current hiring practices are to basically drain talent from the startup pool. Paying an engineer 500k is much cheaper than acquiring the new darling startup they ended up creating (DeepMind), which is much cheaper than acquiring the now large company that is threatening you (instagram), which is still much cheaper than allowing existential threats to you to eventually IPO.
There's the added benefit that you now have a bunch of great engineers on your team, but this isn't the real purpose. The tech giants of the past, IBM, Oracle etc all failed to realize how important it was not only to have good engineers, but to also remove great engineers from the market.
It is part of the norm but the norm is horrifying and stupid yet you are the crazy one for suggesting something different like actually listening to the people you pay to think.
Do you have a citation for this claim?
Doesn't make it right at all. But if you were that engineer, it's easier to say to yourself that you'll work your way up and change things the day you are in charge.
> Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference.
I'd never stopped to think about it, but I think the world would be a much better place if more people did.
To clarify: nothing good for you. Ignoring ethical issues, Facebook certainly benefits.
Still less than what they spend on management.
I studied Electrical Engineering and in my experience, the only thing my classmates cared about was the technical aspects of the field, and often they couldn't see the big picture. Great talents of course, but more like robots, not even capable of understanding the humanitarian aspects of life. Such a waste.
Disclaimer: It's just my experience, not necessarily true for all engineers and engineering schools.
If somebody offered me five to eight times as much as I make today with a huge boost in status and other positive side effects, and all they ask is to quiet down those silly principles, I'm not so sure I'd say no. "You can still do good in 5 years when you've made enough money to be set for life", I'd probably tell myself.
The worst thing is, sticking to those principles just means someone else will take the job.
Coming out of university, I had one job offer (it was a bad down market at the time). My principles made me say no. I didn't want to work on guidance systems for military applications, thank you very much. That choice has cost me a great deal in earning potential. Even so, I would find it hard to blame someone for compromising their principles.
Disclaimers: I'm not an engineer, but my CS degree is ABET accredited. I also took a few more Archaeology, Cog Sci, and Philosophy classes than strictly necessary.
Did a Bachelor's + Master's degree in CS in Europe. Only around 5% of my coursework had (and could!) be outside CS. And you could fill that with things like Game Theory 102 or Copyright Law 101 or something without issue.
When I was in college I did have to take philosophy 101. It and all of the other core classes such as biology and English were nothing more than annoying hurdles. I do enjoy learning about philosophy and such, but that is not at all what happened while I was trying to get my degree.
Though to be totally honest, to a large extent I considered the entire degree earning process to be little more than an about hurdle to entering the job market. I spent practically zero time reflecting in any of it during the process.
Is it a worst practice in our industry right now? Yep. Is it nefariously evil, probably not.
Tech talent of all sorts generally don't know how the business manages money and what rules might apply to that management however.
on edit: added even, removed extra letter at end.