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FAANG companies can certainly offer more money, but there are lots of things other companies can offer too (besides Ruby on Rails apparently). - ownership of t

FAANG companies can certainly offer more money, but there are lots of things other companies can offer too (besides Ruby on Rails apparently). - ownership of the product and process - less red tape and politics - good work life balance - location other than Silicon Valley - boss who pays attention to engineer needs and wants Money is a huge factor but it isn't the only one!

thelean12 6y ago
I feel like people try to tell themselves this, but money is BY FAR the most important factor. And FAANGs pay a ton. Maybe this can be true if you're going from like $250k to $270k from FAANG to FAANG. But most of the time we're talking about something like $180k to $250k when getting poached to a FAANG. It would take a huge amount of perks or otherwise to make that gap worth it. (Of course this isn't true for everyone. But it's true for most)
- hinkley 6y ago
  I know a guy who passed on Apple because they weren't offering anywhere near that. Are a lot of people really seeing this kind of money?
  - faangFar 6y ago
    Apple is known to live off Marketing. Wouldn't surprise me if they had low wages in favor of koolaid drinkers (for lack of a better term)
  - khalilravanna 6y ago
    Yes: https://www.levels.fyi/ https://www.levels.fyi/
    - hinkley 6y ago
      See, I always have trouble with 'stock'. I need more details. Is it a stock grant, or an option grant? Because with a publicly traded company, they'll let anyone buy options. The difference is that I don't have to wait 2 years, but I also don't get to wait three years if things aren't great at 2.
      - dpeck 6y ago
        It’s a grant. You’re given $x value of stock (say $100k). It vests, meaning you can do with what you want, usually at 25% per year, often with a cliff at 1 year and then quarterly/monthly after that. You may have restrictions on when you can sell depending on your position in the company and other rules. But that mostly sums it up at a high level.
      - khalilravanna 6y ago
        AFAIK it’s a stock grant with a vesting (going to assume 3 year, 1 year cliff) period. So after 4 years at BigCo I own $200k in BigCo stock. I agree, options would worthless. They only seem valuable for startups where you’re paying pennies against the potential of a $10/share IPO.
      - oblio 6y ago
        It's always stock grants. Only crappy companies give their employees option grants these days. FAANG doesn't do it, as well as the second tier of tech companies (Oracle, Adobe, etc.). And they will make you rich. Someone who works for these companies at a non-junior level for more than 5-10 years and is reasonable about expenses can quite easily become a millionaire if they work in their offices in developed countries. 5 years for senior positions, 10 years for regular positions.
  - maxlamb 6y ago
    Total compensation, yes (i.e. base salaries are usually much lower)
  - thelean12 6y ago
    I've generally seen high 100s low 200s for L3, mid to high 200s for L4, 300s for L5. This is total comp. I don't know Apple specifically but I'm basing this off of a few of the FAANGs that I have experience with.
- trhway 6y ago
  >But most of the time we're talking about something like $180k to $250k when getting poached to a FAANG In the last couple years we're talking 2-3x from our BigCo's $150-250K. Getting such an increase people do feel like being hit by a bus - at least my friend looked that way for a few days after getting such 3x offer couple years ago from a FAANG style company :) Our managers don't even try to match - during the 2019 not FAANGs gave 2x, 2x and 1.5x (that one still got lucky as his RSUs value almost doubled because of acquisition right before his first year cliff) to the other 3 acquaintances, and beginning of this year a teammate got 2x from Apple after concurrents with another FAANG and couple non-FAANGs.
  - throw1234651234 6y ago
    Wait, are you saying 150-250k is standard and you can get more at FAANG? Most senior devs I know aren't breaking $130 in a flyover. To be clear, a lot aren't breaking $100,000.
    - trhway 6y ago
      It _was_ standard few years back and is still for anybody who hasn't changed job in the last 2-3 years. In our BigCo we're loosing people fast (only lazy sediment like me - Google gave me only 1x - is still there), and the new people, not much of them around though, are getting $300K+ .
      - throw1234651234 6y ago
        I am lost between not believing you and questioning what I am doing with my life.
        mrep 6y ago
        It's about 180k for beginner level, 260k for the level above that, and 370k for seniors at G/FB [0]. And if you consider Chicago flyover, then you can get close to those numbers even in flyover as I'm in Chicago and pulling about 5% less than those numbers. Although it definitely is easier to find those jobs in NYC/Seattle/Bay area. [0]: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En...
- cellularmitosis 6y ago
  > I feel like people try to tell themselves this, but money is BY FAR the most important factor I can only offer the anecdote of myself, but I've floated the idea several times of taking a pay _cut_ to obtain more autonomy. No manager has ever taken me up on it.
  - piva00 6y ago
    I've floated around skipping a promotion cycle to work 4 days/week for same pay. No manager has ever taken me up on it either.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  I feel like people tell themselves the opposite so they can justify continuing to run the SV rat race. Sure you might be able to sock away an extra $10k/yr but the valley is gonna eat most of your raise and leave you miserable if you don't drink the kool-aid.
  - pb7 6y ago
    Is it? Or is it because you can sock away way more than $10K/year extra and have a very enjoyable life both at and outside of work?
fizwhiz 6y ago
You paint a false dichotomy here. These compensation numbers are just as likely in NYC. Work life balance at many of the FAANG companies tends to be better than other companies (especially startups), and I've had plenty of bosses that pay a great deal of attention to my needs.
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  I upvoted both your comment and parent. 9 years at a FAANG and I'd willingly trade plenty of my money and golden handcuffs for a workplace that was more productive, creative, with better communication, and so on. But when I look I just find shops with distorted work life balance, pointless whiteboard coding interviews, egotistical pseudo-feudal lord bosses with an illusion of hierarchical dominance, and a bunch of 25 year olds insisting on the merits of the latest JS framework flavor of the month. Want experienced engineering talent (well, maybe they don't)? Money is not the only factor. Smaller companies are shorter on cash, but there are plenty of other things at work that smaller companies can control for...
  - positr0n 6y ago
    "when I look I just find shops with [...], egotistical pseudo-feudal lord bosses with an illusion of hierarchical dominance, [...]" The rest of the traits you list I can usually figure out, but how can you get at that one from just a couple interviews at a company?
    - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
      A combination of cynicism and reports from employees who already work there or worked there :-) Also describes almost every job I had before coming to Google.
laurentdc 6y ago
Anecdotal, but when I hear of people working impossible hours and with a clueless boss it's almost always a startup or some small shop.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  It's also a good signal that there's something wrong with the management at the startup and/or the startup is not doing well enough to hire the resources they need.
- ryaan_anthony 6y ago
  ive worked for 2 fortune 50s and in both cases i had lots of autonomy and ownership of the product and process.. however other teams in the same org were clearly being burned out and worked to the bone by their bosses. its a management thing. smaller companies have fewer managers so your odds of working under a bad one go up.
theandrewbailey 6y ago
> - location other than Silicon Valley FAANGs have been embracing permanent work from home/anywhere over the past 5 months.
- WJW 6y ago
  Do they pay as much for an Alaska-based dev as for a SV-based dev though? I'd be surprised if that was standing policy outside of a few smaller companies (Basecamp is fairly famous for paying SV salaries to all remote employees)
vkou 6y ago
> - ownership of the product and process I work at FAMANG, and I feel ownership over my product and process. I set priorities for it, I set how work will get done on it, my team collectively determines what kind of processes we follow, and my manager just sanity checks that things are on-track. > - less red tape and politics Red tape, sure, politics, there's no guarantee of less politics in a smaller company. If anything, when politics happens, you don't even have the chance to keep your head down and avoid it. > - good work life balance There are hundreds of thousands of FAMANG engineers who have good work-life balance. There are many who don't, but there's an pretty big upside to working at a firm/on a project, where you aren't just an expensive cost center (non-eng-firms who generally don't give two damns about their engineers), and where you firm/project isn't default-dead (startup). > location other than Silicon Valley Large branch offices exist. Not in the mid-west, but the software jobs in the mid-west tend to be of the 'expensive cost center' variety. > boss who pays attention to engineer needs and wants Why would you think you can't find this at FAMANG?
- roland35 6y ago
  I don't mean to generalize that Big Tech has awful work life balance or other problems (I am sure it is mostly the opposite!), but rather there are lot of things smaller companies can and should offer to be more appealing.
  - vkou 6y ago
    Yes. If your company is actually very good on those things, it can be a good selling point, especially to someone who has been burnt in the past. The problem is that when I'm applying for a job, I have no idea if the hiring manager is being honest with me, or if they are just telling me what I want to hear. Any claims of 'no politics' and 'you own the process' should be taken with a lot of salt.
    - roland35 6y ago
      Ha yes it is hard to believe it when people say it, almost like when someone has to tell everyone they are smart it often means they aren't that smart...
notacoward 6y ago
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Rightly or wrongly, people who have the things you mention start to value them less, and when a FAANG waves a huge stack of green at them it can look very tempting.
lallysingh 6y ago
The three biggest ones are people, scope of work, and future career potential.

thelean12 6y ago

I feel like people try to tell themselves this, but money is BY FAR the most important factor. And FAANGs pay a ton. Maybe this can be true if you're going from like $250k to $270k from FAANG to FAANG. But most of the time we're talking about something like $180k to $250k when getting poached to a FAANG. It would take a huge amount of perks or otherwise to make that gap worth it. (Of course this isn't true for everyone. But it's true for most)

hinkley 6y ago
I know a guy who passed on Apple because they weren't offering anywhere near that. Are a lot of people really seeing this kind of money?
- faangFar 6y ago
  Apple is known to live off Marketing. Wouldn't surprise me if they had low wages in favor of koolaid drinkers (for lack of a better term)
- khalilravanna 6y ago
  Yes: https://www.levels.fyi/ https://www.levels.fyi/
  - hinkley 6y ago
    See, I always have trouble with 'stock'. I need more details. Is it a stock grant, or an option grant? Because with a publicly traded company, they'll let anyone buy options. The difference is that I don't have to wait 2 years, but I also don't get to wait three years if things aren't great at 2.
    - dpeck 6y ago
      It’s a grant. You’re given $x value of stock (say $100k). It vests, meaning you can do with what you want, usually at 25% per year, often with a cliff at 1 year and then quarterly/monthly after that. You may have restrictions on when you can sell depending on your position in the company and other rules. But that mostly sums it up at a high level.
    - khalilravanna 6y ago
      AFAIK it’s a stock grant with a vesting (going to assume 3 year, 1 year cliff) period. So after 4 years at BigCo I own $200k in BigCo stock. I agree, options would worthless. They only seem valuable for startups where you’re paying pennies against the potential of a $10/share IPO.
    - oblio 6y ago
      It's always stock grants. Only crappy companies give their employees option grants these days. FAANG doesn't do it, as well as the second tier of tech companies (Oracle, Adobe, etc.). And they will make you rich. Someone who works for these companies at a non-junior level for more than 5-10 years and is reasonable about expenses can quite easily become a millionaire if they work in their offices in developed countries. 5 years for senior positions, 10 years for regular positions.
- maxlamb 6y ago
  Total compensation, yes (i.e. base salaries are usually much lower)
- thelean12 6y ago
  I've generally seen high 100s low 200s for L3, mid to high 200s for L4, 300s for L5. This is total comp. I don't know Apple specifically but I'm basing this off of a few of the FAANGs that I have experience with.
trhway 6y ago
>But most of the time we're talking about something like $180k to $250k when getting poached to a FAANG In the last couple years we're talking 2-3x from our BigCo's $150-250K. Getting such an increase people do feel like being hit by a bus - at least my friend looked that way for a few days after getting such 3x offer couple years ago from a FAANG style company :) Our managers don't even try to match - during the 2019 not FAANGs gave 2x, 2x and 1.5x (that one still got lucky as his RSUs value almost doubled because of acquisition right before his first year cliff) to the other 3 acquaintances, and beginning of this year a teammate got 2x from Apple after concurrents with another FAANG and couple non-FAANGs.
- throw1234651234 6y ago
  Wait, are you saying 150-250k is standard and you can get more at FAANG? Most senior devs I know aren't breaking $130 in a flyover. To be clear, a lot aren't breaking $100,000.
  - trhway 6y ago
    It _was_ standard few years back and is still for anybody who hasn't changed job in the last 2-3 years. In our BigCo we're loosing people fast (only lazy sediment like me - Google gave me only 1x - is still there), and the new people, not much of them around though, are getting $300K+ .
    - throw1234651234 6y ago
      I am lost between not believing you and questioning what I am doing with my life.
      - mrep 6y ago
        It's about 180k for beginner level, 260k for the level above that, and 370k for seniors at G/FB [0]. And if you consider Chicago flyover, then you can get close to those numbers even in flyover as I'm in Chicago and pulling about 5% less than those numbers. Although it definitely is easier to find those jobs in NYC/Seattle/Bay area. [0]: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En...
cellularmitosis 6y ago
> I feel like people try to tell themselves this, but money is BY FAR the most important factor I can only offer the anecdote of myself, but I've floated the idea several times of taking a pay _cut_ to obtain more autonomy. No manager has ever taken me up on it.
- piva00 6y ago
  I've floated around skipping a promotion cycle to work 4 days/week for same pay. No manager has ever taken me up on it either.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
I feel like people tell themselves the opposite so they can justify continuing to run the SV rat race. Sure you might be able to sock away an extra $10k/yr but the valley is gonna eat most of your raise and leave you miserable if you don't drink the kool-aid.
- pb7 6y ago
  Is it? Or is it because you can sock away way more than $10K/year extra and have a very enjoyable life both at and outside of work?

fizwhiz 6y ago

You paint a false dichotomy here. These compensation numbers are just as likely in NYC. Work life balance at many of the FAANG companies tends to be better than other companies (especially startups), and I've had plenty of bosses that pay a great deal of attention to my needs.

cmrdporcupine 6y ago
I upvoted both your comment and parent. 9 years at a FAANG and I'd willingly trade plenty of my money and golden handcuffs for a workplace that was more productive, creative, with better communication, and so on. But when I look I just find shops with distorted work life balance, pointless whiteboard coding interviews, egotistical pseudo-feudal lord bosses with an illusion of hierarchical dominance, and a bunch of 25 year olds insisting on the merits of the latest JS framework flavor of the month. Want experienced engineering talent (well, maybe they don't)? Money is not the only factor. Smaller companies are shorter on cash, but there are plenty of other things at work that smaller companies can control for...
- positr0n 6y ago
  "when I look I just find shops with [...], egotistical pseudo-feudal lord bosses with an illusion of hierarchical dominance, [...]" The rest of the traits you list I can usually figure out, but how can you get at that one from just a couple interviews at a company?
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    A combination of cynicism and reports from employees who already work there or worked there :-) Also describes almost every job I had before coming to Google.

laurentdc 6y ago

Anecdotal, but when I hear of people working impossible hours and with a clueless boss it's almost always a startup or some small shop.

three_seagrass 6y ago
It's also a good signal that there's something wrong with the management at the startup and/or the startup is not doing well enough to hire the resources they need.
ryaan_anthony 6y ago
ive worked for 2 fortune 50s and in both cases i had lots of autonomy and ownership of the product and process.. however other teams in the same org were clearly being burned out and worked to the bone by their bosses. its a management thing. smaller companies have fewer managers so your odds of working under a bad one go up.

theandrewbailey 6y ago

> - location other than Silicon Valley FAANGs have been embracing permanent work from home/anywhere over the past 5 months.

WJW 6y ago
Do they pay as much for an Alaska-based dev as for a SV-based dev though? I'd be surprised if that was standing policy outside of a few smaller companies (Basecamp is fairly famous for paying SV salaries to all remote employees)

vkou 6y ago

> - ownership of the product and process I work at FAMANG, and I feel ownership over my product and process. I set priorities for it, I set how work will get done on it, my team collectively determines what kind of processes we follow, and my manager just sanity checks that things are on-track. > - less red tape and politics Red tape, sure, politics, there's no guarantee of less politics in a smaller company. If anything, when politics happens, you don't even have the chance to keep your head down and avoid it. > - good work life balance There are hundreds of thousands of FAMANG engineers who have good work-life balance. There are many who don't, but there's an pretty big upside to working at a firm/on a project, where you aren't just an expensive cost center (non-eng-firms who generally don't give two damns about their engineers), and where you firm/project isn't default-dead (startup). > location other than Silicon Valley Large branch offices exist. Not in the mid-west, but the software jobs in the mid-west tend to be of the 'expensive cost center' variety. > boss who pays attention to engineer needs and wants Why would you think you can't find this at FAMANG?

roland35 6y ago
I don't mean to generalize that Big Tech has awful work life balance or other problems (I am sure it is mostly the opposite!), but rather there are lot of things smaller companies can and should offer to be more appealing.
- vkou 6y ago
  Yes. If your company is actually very good on those things, it can be a good selling point, especially to someone who has been burnt in the past. The problem is that when I'm applying for a job, I have no idea if the hiring manager is being honest with me, or if they are just telling me what I want to hear. Any claims of 'no politics' and 'you own the process' should be taken with a lot of salt.
  - roland35 6y ago
    Ha yes it is hard to believe it when people say it, almost like when someone has to tell everyone they are smart it often means they aren't that smart...

notacoward 6y ago

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Rightly or wrongly, people who have the things you mention start to value them less, and when a FAANG waves a huge stack of green at them it can look very tempting.

lallysingh 6y ago

The three biggest ones are people, scope of work, and future career potential.