Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

Issue #1: "doing ML or something like that" is not a job description that would ever make it through HR at Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, or Google. (I could imagine slightly more flexible job descriptions at Amazon, given that hiring is more team-driven there, but not to that degree.)

Issue #2: ignoring Netflix (which only has one "title" for SWEs, with pay starting at ~$300k for 2-3 YoE, but more commonly $400-450k+ at 7-8), the rest of those companies have fairly standard ranges for compensation based on level. $110k TC is below the bottom of the entry-level SWE range in SF. At a stretch, it might be the bottom of the range in Arizona or Texas (for Amazon). Entry-level, mind you.

But Principal Engineer? Amazon's Principal Engineer is the "lowest" one, where it's parallel to Staff at Google/Facebook. Comp range is pretty wide, but bottoms out at $450k. This isn't the sort of thing where a bad recruiter can screw you over; it would require getting sign-off from senior management, probably in both HR and Engineering, to make that sort of exception, but why would they bother? If you passed an interview for a Principal-level engineering role, extending you an offer of $110k would almost have to be a deliberate insult, because of how trivially you would be able to get other offers of $500k+ from the other players in the acronym.

And, in fact, there is evidence that you could trivially provide: the email with the offer. I don't expect it will be provided, even in the exceptionally unlikely universe where there exists an email from a Facebook/Amazon/Google recruiter offering someone $110k TC to work in San Francisco as a Principal-level engineering IC.

To reiterate: if you are interviewing for a software engineering role with a FANG company for a role in California, you can expect the following TC pay bands:

Entry-level (L3 @ G/F, L4 @ Amzn): $140-180k

Mid-level (L4 @ G/F, L5 @ Amzn): $200-280k (Amzn might have a lower floor, but not often)

Senior (L5 @ G/F, L6 @ Amzn): $300-400k

Staff (L6 @ G/F, L7 @ Amzn, called Principal): $450-650+

As always, there will be some exceptions. Exceptions at the bottom will tend to be web dev/full-stack roles, which at most places have slightly lower pay bands. ML roles, contrariwise, will tend to skew higher... (at least, adjusted for experience level).

I could maybe believe it, if, out of the thousands (tens of thousands?) of engineers hired at mid-level to work at Bay Area G/F/A offices in the last couple years, a few of them were offered $110k TC. It'd still require some pretty substantial deviations from their usual process, but it's imaginable. I cannot imagine that happening for someone offered a senior+ role. Like, literally, I cannot imagine what set of organizational and procedural failures would have to align for that outcome to occur. It's not worth factoring into one's calculations when deciding whether or not to spend time applying to and studying for FANG interviews.