The difference is they aren’t paying the engineers 300k they are paying an endless amount of administrator executives with “industry experience” aka 20yrs emailing spreadsheets between other managers at IBM.
I realized this once when I started attending (Canadian) gov ‘innovation’ events and ‘startup’ funding initiatives.
There was hardly anyone I’d consider an engineer that is benefiting from these systems. It’s a giant well organized grift for washed up “industry” execs and others hangers on with friends in the right places.
And I don’t mean to be ageist saying that. That would be over simplifying, but there is a inherent preference to those with safe names in their resume, regardless of relevancy. But there’s plenty of spaces in between for youthful people who understand how these meat factories work. Especially ones who understand their value, usually the unnamed ones working on the edges.
But by the time it comes to actually making the meat most of the money has already been allocated to the aforementioned people and they rush to find outsource the “real” work to some overpaid consulting company who are also experts at fleecing these gov contracts with endless meetings and perfecting the right checkmarks get checked.
I remember going to a Zuckerberg talk around 2010 at YC school at Stanford and he mentioned how he was hiring engineers even for the typical ‘executive’ jobs and I remember feeling like that’s the difference between startup tech companies and these failed hundred million dollar imitations.
It all comes down to the people and which ones are getting the power. Basically which side of the “iron rule” they come from https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html