Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The people talking about working long hours at Apple are getting paid commensurately. Not really. Most divisions in SWE do stack ranking (unofficially). The top quintile (decile in some groups) gets a majority of compensation at review time. The bottom half is lucky to get a cost of living adjustment to their base pay. They likely will get no RSUs and little if any cash bonus. Despite the disparity in compensation…
So then that makes me wonder, why work there? For the prestige? For having a bad-ass CV entry? I've spent my 11 year career working in start-ups and companies that nobody knows about, I get paid enough to be in top 2% earners in EU, I never work more than 40h a week because that simply isn't legal for an employer to tell me to do unless it explicitly states so in my contract, and none of my contracts have so far stat…
To be clear: It’s because they’re still being paid very, very well.
The top paying tech companies are kind of a weird bubble because they pay so well on average but they also have a huge upward range beyond that for top performers. It leads to situations where someone can be making $200-300K per year but end up feeling underpaid because someone they know is getting $600K for being a top performer at a top company.
It’s also important to put it in perspective. Relatively few engineers work at these companies in total. The vast majority of engineers work at more mainstream companies where the pay is still good (though maybe not retire early good) and the hours are reasonable. People at the big companies are working long hours to compete for those few coveted top positions and top salaries. But you definitely don’t have to work at those companies.