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+1 to this. 10 years ago you couldn't make 400K at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. Now you can. Startups made a lot more sense when your opportunity cost was
by swimorsinka 8y ago
+1 to this. 10 years ago you couldn't make 400K at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. Now you can.
Startups made a lot more sense when your opportunity cost was 50-150K per year.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ryandrake 8y agoYou can make that much. You can also win the lottery. Your opportunity cost should not be measured against your best case alternative, it should be measured against a most likely case.
- swimorsinka 8y agoI agree with this too. There is a tier of engineers that are good, but for whatever reason, can't get into the big 5. They're bad at white-boarding or maybe they don't live in an area where the big 5 have offices. In those cases, maybe a startup makes more sense.
- jaegerpicker 8y agoOften I find a number of great engineers that the big 5 disqualify for two main reasons: Location or Education. The big 5 tend to not allow remote work and if you don't have a college degree it's often hella hard to get an interview.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoBut the Big5 have tons of locations. Amazon in particular has tech centers in places like Phoenix and Detroit, while Google is in Chicago. Microsoft is even in Fargo! Unless you want to be a digital nomad I guess. Then it’s probably not ideal, but I do know some fully remote positions exist at the L6 level at Amazon.
- neutrino7 8y ago> But the Big5 have tons of locations Name one Big5 job in the entire U.S. south. Or at least one that pays as well as them. There aren’t any.
- nunez 8y agoFacebook is in Austin; Amazon is in Dallas
- neutrino7 8y agoOk, so Texas is technically in the South... you got me. I suppose I should have clarified: major southeastern cities (Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, D.C., Nashville, Miami)
- blasdel 8y agoAWS has several thousand engineers in the Virginia suburbs of DC, with a bunch of local VP-level management (and that's not including anyone who works on the us-east-1 region)
- didibus 8y agoApple and Amazon could end up choosing Raleigh for their HQ2. So maybe that'll soon change.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoI've only ever lived in Raleigh and I'm very skeptical they'll pick Raleigh for HQ2. I'll be very excited if Apple ends up deciding on Raleigh though, it could easily push up salaries significantly.
- burlesona 8y agoAustin isn’t the south. Raleigh / Durham probably is the best tech scene in the south. No mega companies but a good number of second tier, ie. Redhat, Sas, Epic, and so on
- lgregg 8y agoYeah, I doubt I'll even bother to apply to the big 5, maybe even the big 20. I'm coming out of a yearlong software intensive in October with a liberal art major from a marketing background. I know a few people at those companies but there is also the question of leetcode. I think my chances are much higher with other types of companies, startups included.
- TheHydroImpulse 8y agoAs someone without a degree, getting an interview at the Big 5 was quite easy. Passing those interviews is another thing entirely but having the right experiences in your resume has been more important in my case.
- lgregg 8y agoThat's the thing, right now, I don't really have the "right experiences" that's why startups do seem appealing. I have the skills people are looking for but not the resume validation with internships, the right degree, or school. I got an internship at the start of my intensive where I got to work on some fun problems and used my marketing skills too. I think the only other track would be through open source contributions. If we circled back in December or January, I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up at a non-tech SMB, small consultancy, or startup because of my prior experiences in marketing paired with my new SWE skills. Something I was wondering, in your experience or anyone reading, do I have to always focus all the technology stacks for each role and project or can I focus more on the problem I solved? For example, in my internship, for one problem that made a big difference was setting up all their email automation and tieing it into their website. That project wasn't a ton of programming but my work; but by the end got them about $150k in revenue with my other work on their Black Friday sale, as an intern. Most of the SWE projects I got started but wasn't able to finish in the 3 months (priorities kept changing) like a tool that converted audio from videos into searchable indexes for their youtube videos (granular text searchable video basically). I'm hoping to redo that project on my own. I did get their website to speed up though (an older WordPress website).
- 8y ago
- wolco 8y agoIn those cases the big 20 make sense. Stsrtups are great but you are always held hostage waiting to cashin
- AjayTripathy 8y agoIf you want to look the average comp at FAANG or any well-paying public company it's "only" 250k. That versus the average case at a startup being closer to 150k (average options are worth 0).
- mkirklions 8y agoI wonder how sustainable this is. Its 400k while their stock price is crazy high. But If we really are in a tech bubble, that money is back to the typically 80-120k of most tech jobs.
- rconti 8y agoBut the startups will suffer in the same way.
- jonny_eh 8y agoIf there is a bubble + a burst, I'd rather be at a big company flush with cash. (Note: I'm currently at a startup!)
- what_ever 8y agoDisagree. You get 400k at FAANG when your base is 150k plus 20% bonus. Sure that bonus will go down to 10% but the rest of the 100k+ stock grant per year is not going to become 0. You would still end up with 225k which is still more than startups.
- onion2k 8y agoA burst bubble will kill pretty much every startup that can't get to profit with what they have in the bank right now. Raising will be next to impossible. You do not want to be at a startup if that happens. I'm old enough to have seen the dot-com bubble and it's aftermath, and it wasn't pretty.
- docker_up 8y agoFacebook and Google and others make their money globally. They don't actually make a lot of money from Silicon Valley that's just where their workers are. I can't think of a more diversified, protected stream of income than one of the FANGs right now, even if the US has a recession, there are still countries around the world that will be doing better.
- mkirklions 8y ago>I can't think of a more diversified, protected stream of income than one of the FANGs Arent they 100% tech and nearly 0 physical products? That is not what I learned 'diversification' is.
- rconti 8y agoBasically, startups started taking more funding, and VCs realized there was more money to be made, so they're squeezing the little guy with terms. A small startup taking less (or no) funding can 'afford' to give more equity to employees, who are effectively providing the capital (in the form of labor) to the business. Today's startups taking huge amounts of funding AND cheap labor are trying to have it both ways.
- dunpeal 8y agoYup, they just realized "hey, why should we pay random engineers millions of dollars on successful exists?". They never stopped promising them, they just stopped putting any terms in the equity plans that would lead to them.
- expertentipp 8y ago> 10 years ago you couldn't make 400K at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. Now you can. > when your opportunity cost was 50-150K per year. That's why Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, etc are not attractive at all in Europe.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 8y agoCan you elaborate? My impression was that they still pay very well, while the startup scene is much less hot than in Silicon Valley.
- jonmb 8y agoHonest question since I'm not familiar with the area - who is making 400k at Microsoft or Facebook? Not the typical mid-level software engineer, I'd assume. Are these product leads or head engineers making the 400k?
- dunpeal 8y agoThese numbers are realistic for any senior engineer working there for over 3-4 years.
- jonmb 8y agoAre these engineers at Facebook/Google/etc. working the typical 40 hour work week or more like 60-80?
- JeremyBanks 8y agoDepends whether you count the half of their workday that is spent on a bus.
- rconti 8y agoThat's optional, for folks who WANT to commute (eg, either want a big house in BFE, or want to live the city life, or whatever). If you want a short commute, it's yours -- if you live in the city, work for one of the many tech companies up there. If you want to work at FB, come be my neighbor and walk to work, I live in a great walkable neighborhood <2mi from FBHQ.
- faang_emp_1 8y agoObviously a throwaway account, but I work at Facebook, on an infrastructure team. I average ~45 hours/week, except for the week I'm oncall, which is about every three months. I probably work 60 hours that week. I get in early (7:30am) and leave early (3 or 3:30), and sometimes I'll review diffs at night, but normally my laptop stays in my trunk when I'm at home. I work hard when I'm at work, and really focus. I don't do a lot of the extra-curricular stuff that you can easily spend your time on. I'm an L6 and last year earned just north $450K with decent performance reviews. I have damn near a million dollars in unvested $FB RSUs, too, so there's almost no chance I'm going to leave for anywhere that won't match that with equally liquid public shares. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯