Senior FAANG reality check
Social threads argue that senior FAANG engineers (IC7+) often 'rest and vest'—doing minimal work while earning outsized comp—while other engineers still patch P0 bugs on weekends, highlighting uneven work patterns and priorities inside big tech. The discussion surfaced real trade‑offs between title, influence, and day‑to‑day impact. (x.com)
IC7 maps to the senior‑staff/principal band used across big tech (commonly L7/E7/IC7); Google’s L7 median total compensation is listed at about $995,921 on Levels.fyi. (levels.fyi (levels.fyi)) (levels.fyi) “Rest‑and‑vest” (aka “coasters”) has been a recurring Silicon Valley theme in press and forum threads for nearly a decade, with Business Insider/Hacker News coverage going back to 2017 and renewed commentary in recent years. (news.ycombinator.com (news.ycombinator.com)) (news.ycombinator.com) First‑hand social posts and a viral X thread in 2025 showing a FAANG engineer spending hours on a Sunday production incident underlined that some engineers still handle P0 firefighting on weekends. (livemint.com (livemint.com)) (livemint.com) Company leadership has publicly pushed back: Google executives signaled higher productivity expectations at recent all‑hands and conferences, and coverage in Dice and CNBC documented Sundar Pichai’s warning that employees “can’t rest” amid intense AI competition. (dice.com (dice.com)) (dice.com) Several insiders and long‑form posts explain the trade‑off explicitly: reaching IC7 often shifts responsibility from writing large amounts of code to cross‑org influence, design reviews, and mentoring, which can reduce day‑to‑day hands‑on impact even as total comp rises. (hackernoon.com (hackernoon.com)) (hackernoon.com) Signals from forums (Blind reviews noting stalled promotions) plus employer moves on equity refresh and headcount suggest firms are increasingly tying senior pay to demonstrable ongoing impact rather than title alone. (teamblind.com (teamblind.com)) (teamblind.com)
