This is a toxic mentality; getting hired at FAANG has very little to do with your "talent"

Talent is obviously subjective.

If you define talent as the criteria by which FAANG selects from a pool of employees - then you're by definition correct.

If you don't - then you disagree.

If FAANG is paying top dollar and selecting for trash - you have to wonder why, though.

I can't think of a more toxic mentality then thinking it doesn't. In what way do you think talent doesn't play a huge role?

The odd, perhaps not entirely coincidental, relationship between ivy league pedigree and job at FAANG. While there's a correlation between talent and ivy league the relationship is often tenuous. In my experience the difference between a new grad from MIT and a new grad from state school is almost zero in the professional world. Yet, one of these people have a fast pass to FAANG. This is not unusual. Look at Finance. However, to assert that "talent" plays a bigger role than pedigree is simply a falsehood refuted by the evidence.

I mean yes a lot of sub par metrics and proxies are used because people get really up in arms about using IQ tests; the best indicator Google ever found.

> Yet, one of these people have a fast pass to FAANG.

Citation? I haven't seen anything like that in the industry at all.

> ivy league pedigree and job at FAANG

I worked at FB and Amazon for six years total and the vast majority of my fellow engineers were from random mediocre schools (including myself, from the U. of Arizona).

I'm talented at sucking up and playing politics like a harp. Like a freaking genius at it, seriously. Is that what you meant?