>I have not worked for a FAANG, so maybe things are different there, but I don't suspect so

it is quite a bit different at FAANG. I've workded for small companies, huge companies that aren't software/FAANG, and now FAANG, and it's definitely better here.

The floor is very high for talent and just an overall ability to get stuff done. Google certainly doesn't have a monopoly on genius coders, i've met brilliant folks at all different size companies.

It is very good at making sure the caliber of the average engineer is quite high. Code quality is shockingly good across teams and codebases. I said good, not amazing, there are definitely differences in teams and I can cherry pick projects outside of google that had better code than some at google.

But the consistency of it being decent is very high.

I'm also dubious of your claim that compensation doesn't attract better talent. In my 25+ years of coding, it's a pretty damn strong correlation. The people who leave google to go to even higher paying places like the top hedge funds or Anthropic are not the most 'average' caliber talent, it's usualy the better folks.