I don't know if it's actually bimodal to the degree that, say, law is. But I have seen the dynamic where, if someone at a smaller company gets an offer from, say, Facebook, the response of the company is to basically shrug and move on.
Probably not to the degree that law is bimodal, but there's certainly a different distribution of salaries in the big tech and venture capital companies than there is in "everywhere else".
If someone got an offer from Facebook and puts it on the table, there is no way to compete with that as anything other than another big tech company. There's no way that say... Jack's Links ( https://jobs.smartrecruiters.com/JackLinksProteinSnacks/7439... ) can compete with working at a big tech company.
This also goes for interviewing. I've seen new grads (back in the boomier times) say "I have an offer with {big tech co}" part way through the interview and say "ok" and stop the process since there's really no point in going on - the smaller shop better uses their time interviewing other candidates that may accept.
