> I'm also dubious of your claim that compensation doesn't attract better talent.

Maybe higher compensation does work out for FAANG, but it does not at other larger employers, at least not for software developers. I am highly dubious about this at FAANG too though. My perspective is as a former 15 year JavaScript developer and a lot of what I saw coming out of FAANG in JavaScript land just wasn’t impressive.

I do see a lot of impressive things in the world of JavaScript but it’s almost always open source from small teams or single developers.