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> With a full time job as full stack developer at a good company he would have done a lot more. The guy is good, at a FANG he would earn 200+ guaranteed and a p

> With a full time job as full stack developer at a good company he would have done a lot more. The guy is good, at a FANG he would earn 200+ guaranteed and a pension plan. I don't want to attack this comment in particular, specially because they're saying this to simply support the argument that the guy is an excellent programmer, but it irks me when people say stuff this assuming that an excellent programmer always has easy access to a FAANG. Some people simply live in underdeveloped countries where their talents can't shine and they have no way to get an interview at FAANG, some people are either too young or too old to be a good candidate, and a myriad other things that could get in the way of an excellent programmer. In such scenarios, an Internet business like this is the only way out for some programmers. I'd bet there are hundreds or thousands of genius programmers living in Russia, Brazil, the Balkans, Guatemala and many other countries that simply couldn't land a job at FAANG even if they wanted to.

high_byte 6y ago
my issue is with that comment assuming Photopea is full-time job. maybe it is idk, but maybe it isn't and he can still work a day job and this is a side business. regardless of FAANG ofc.
sildur 6y ago
> Some people simply live in underdeveloped countries where their talents can't shine and they have no way to get an interview at FAANG Some other people would consider morally reprehensible to be accomplices of FAANG. I wouldn't work for them even if I could. It would be like working for Fox News.
elric 6y ago
I don't know what it's like in other countries, but here in Belgium, if you want compensation that is anywhere near FAANG levels, you have to go the freelance route and charge high day rates. Then we'd have to be talking rates of 1000eur/day or more, which is extremely rare. And if you didn't incorporate, you'll be taking home less than 500eur/day. Which is still three times more than what the average SE employee gets to take home. But it's a far cry from US FAANG levels.
sebastiangraef 6y ago
He is also building an asset which he can sell.
IvanK_net 6y ago
Hi guys, I am Ivan, the creator of Photopea :) I made almost $1 million in the last 12 months, 90% from ads. The rest is from Premium (users paying to hide ads) and licensing a self-hosted version of Photopea. When you start your own project, you never know, if it will ever make $250k a year. But if you get hired, you can be quite sure, that you will never make more than $250k a year. Follow Photopea to see my progress :) http://facebook.com/photopea http://facebook.com/photopea , http://twitter.com/photopeacom http://twitter.com/photopeacom
- Winterflow3r 6y ago
  Congratulations! I think your story is very inspiring and I wish you and Photopea lots more success in the future!
- nakodari 6y ago
  Congrats Ivan! Great looking app. Quick question - is this $1 million revenue from Ads alone or does it include subscription as well?
  - cinntaile 6y ago
    His comment, that you're replying to, literally says 90% of the $1 million usd revenue comes from ads. The rest, so 10% of $1 million, comes from subscriptions and so on.
    - nakodari 6y ago
      It looks like he edited his comment to add this info. His original comment didn’t include info. Thanks!
- secondcoming 6y ago
  deleted
  - techrat 6y ago
    >Edit: I just checked our systems and you're mainly XXXXX. We've given you XXXXX since the start of the year (before the ad network takes their cut) Are you even allowed to release customer/client info like that?
veidr 6y ago
That, plus the fact that building your own shit, being your own boss, and making your own mark on the world is probably a lot cooler and more satisfying to most of us here than helping sell more ads or get people to watch even more TV.
quickthrower2 6y ago
Does FAANG let you delegate your time to other people. E.g. if I don’t feel like coding today I can just hire someone to do it for me and collect my FAANG salary? Can I sell my job for a million when I’m fed up of it? No? Ok then running photopea is not comparable to a FAANG 9-5
onion2k 6y ago
Besides the fact that he might not want to, I suspect many FAANG companies aren't optimized for hiring developers capable of making something like Photopea. Very little about the hiring process at somewhere like Google or Facebook is about what you can make on your own. FAANGs hire for people who can make a small part of a larger whole incredibly well. That's mostly good for what they do, which often requires deep knowledge of specialist algorithms, but they miss out on hiring generalists who aren't necessarily good at the deep stuff but who can make lots of simple processes work well together. Which,in my opinion, is what you need to be a good front end developer.
- sida 6y ago
  While I don't disagree with you (and want to start there). I just think photopea is far more than "generalists who aren't necessarily good at the deep stuff". I think Photopea is pretty complicated alogrithm wise too
odiroot 6y ago
> Some people simply live in underdeveloped countries where their talents can't shine and they have no way to get an interview at FAANG And there's a high chance they would be rejected for lack of culture fit anyway. Or fail one of the quirky whiteboard tests.
ThePhysicist 6y ago
Yep, I also have the impression you need a lot more to land a job at a FAANG than to simply be an excellent programmer. The interview process at companies like Google can be pretty byzantine and hard to master without an internal "champion" I heard.
- icemelt8 6y ago
  A friend from Karachi, spent a few years in USA, landed a job in Amazon on his own, if he can do it, you can too.
tiagod 6y ago
And some people, even if they have the chance to move to the US or some rich city where FAANG has engineering offices, would rather stay with their friends and family at the city they were born and make a lot less.
rijoja 6y ago
Eh I used to want to work for Google, but now I see it about as sexy as working for AT&T. Doing something like this gives you respect and freedom instead.
- matsemann 6y ago
  Also, working for these FAANGs to get the high salary means moving to the US, which for many Europeans has become undesirable the later years.
  - gbin 6y ago
    Do you mean it is bad for their career if they go back in Europe or simply they usually don't like living in the US?
    - dx034 6y ago
      Moving away from home is just not something many people want to do. I don't think many Americans would move to another country with different language and far away from their family, just because they'd get a higher salary.
    - e12e 6y ago
      The US is seen as a bit of a backwards country; poor medical, technologically poor (banking, internet), little paid time off/vacation, no free/cheap higher education, rampant gun violence/domestic terror - on top of that you risk loosing some pension and health benefits in your "home" country if you stay abroad for years. Note that the point with a solid/free education system isn't that kids of rich SEs get free college - it's that society as a whole gets better education - and your kid's friends also have a future/access to education.
    - aloisdg 6y ago
      French here. No way I would leave a society who achieve 35 workweek, minimum wage, 25 days payed vacation and free healthcare. As a programmer I could win more in another country, but I dont want this money if people around me cant live a decent life. Even in France it is quite hard. I wont leave for a lesser country like the US. I want my nurse to be able to do a great work and it means having a good life.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
I'm not sure it would even make much sense for them to work at a FAANG. Running a small entrepreneurial business is so different from succeeding in a large corporation. In one you need to be a master of everything from marketing through to development, in the other you are going to need to be highly specialised to merit a large income. My guess is he wouldn't want to work in a FAANG and they wouldn't want to hire him.
- sammorrowdrums 6y ago
  Reminds me of this https://mobile.twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 https://mobile.twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 And many other similar stories
- jackTheMan 6y ago
  I've worked for Amazon and all I had to do is getting permissions from teams and then do some config changes (or similar level programming) in their software. Needless to say year-by-year I forgot everything I've learned before. My CV might got a boost, but my skillset decreased a lot. Only thing what I've learned is politics and how to push and decorate an empty promo doc. I was a braindead when I finally got my stocks. So went back to the startup word, where I could thrive. The average lifespan was like 1 year there, most people did not even wait for the stock so basically worked cheap for amazon.
o_p 6y ago
Its just shocking to think that wasting your talent into making people click more ads for some faceless corp can even be compared to creating something great like Photopea.
- NullPrefix 6y ago
  >The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks. - Jeff Hammerbacher
  - quickthrower2 6y ago
    Worse than that - buy shit they don’t need having been manipulated by big data. Google doesn’t sell clicks it sells expected customer value.
    - rchaud 6y ago
      Google is absolutely selling clicks when an advertiser can perch their website on top of a search query for its competitor.
      - quickthrower2 6y ago
        If I spend $1000 on ads and get zero sales I don’t care about number of clicks. Conversely depending on my market a single click could be worth $1000.
  - sfifs 6y ago
    Compared to the best mids of previous generations making things that would blast civilization back to stone age in matter of minutes, I'd say this is progress :-)
    - Hiopl 6y ago
      Except even the most destructive technologies have lead to incalculably valuable advancements for society. This is clearly a step back when we'd rather funnel our best minds into ads rather than things that could in a very real way help advance our civilization. We're going to regret this sooner than later.
JosephRedfern 6y ago
Indeed, it sort of assumes that working at FAANG with a pension plan and 200k+ is what the author should be striving for (the objectively better option), and I’m not sure if that’s accurate. While there are obvious benefits to FAANGing, there’s also a lot to be said for working for a smaller team, or even yourself. Money isn’t the soul (or even main) motivator for a lot of people.
- tehlike 6y ago
  There is no pension. There is 401k.
  - JosephRedfern 6y ago
    Depends where you are. In the UK and much of the EU it’s a pension, as far as I know. Either way, isn’t this mostly semantics? My point is that one persons priorities doesn’t necessarily match with another’s.
    - tehlike 6y ago
      Fair.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Some countries call what Americans call a “401k” a “pension”. Americans use “pension” as short for “defined benefit pension”, meaning you are owed some amount of money every month after the retirement age, and it’s up to the employer to do whatever needs to be done to provide it. Americans use “401k” or “IRA” to refer to a defined contribution pension, one where the employer (and employee) contributes a certain amount into an account that is withdrawn from after retirement. However, the amount the employee can withdraw is subject to however much is in the account when they retire and however much the employee wants to periodically withdraw, so there is no definite benefit amount. I have British family that refer to the latter as a pension, but we would not in the US. I would be surprised if any modern tech company offers a defined benefit pension anymore, even in UK/Europe.
luch 6y ago
Not even underdeveloped countries, I live in a G8 country and there is hardly any significant FAANG shop here. For example if you want to work for Google in Europe it's either UK or Switzerland, which are interestingly the two developed european countries outside of the EU :)
- knolan 6y ago
  Lots of them have a presence in Ireland too.
  - secfirstmd 6y ago
    Yeh and there's are crazy amount of hiring here at the moment. FB, Amazon, TikTok, Stripe, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Salesforces (amongst others) all hiring from Hundreds to a few thousand
    - Normille 6y ago
      Yes. Ireland seems to be pretty much basing its entire economy, at the moment, on attracting huge American megacorps to set up shop in Dublin. Rather than actually investing in producing anything themselves. It's a recipe for disaster. As will become apparent when some other equally strategically placed jurisdiction starts offering even more enticing tax-breaks and the megacorps up sticks and decamp there instead. Then the whole house of cards [and with it most of the Irish economy] will come tumbling down. What a pathetic pathetic country! [and I say that as a terminally embarrassed Irishman]
      - Silhouette 6y ago
        It's a recipe for disaster. As will become apparent when some other equally strategically placed jurisdiction starts offering even more enticing tax-breaks and the megacorps up sticks and decamp there instead. At the moment, if I were the Irish government, I think I'd be more concerned with the likelihood of genuine international collaboration on business taxes than any single rival nation setting up a more favourable tax regime. Even the Biden administration now seems to be acknowledging that this may be the way forward with the need for governments to make up unprecedented economic damage from the pandemic, and if the US moves that way, there is political cover and financial incentive for other governments in the developed world to move that way too.
Escapado 6y ago
I mean even in germany it's not easy. The average salary of a SE here is about 65k before taxes. Most senior engineers I met make about 80-85k before taxes (~50k after taxes) (I am located in hamburg). Even for well booked freelancers about 1 in 10 people make more than 200k a year (140k being the average which results in about 72k profit after taxes). I just had a quick look at google, netflix, twitter and facebook and they don't even offer any SE positions here. Amazon has some in Berlin but they pay around the same salary as stated above.
- igeligel_dev 6y ago
  Amazon pays a lot more here in Berlin. People in Germany forget to add stocks to the total compensation. Source: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Amazon/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Amazon/salaries/Software-Engi... Otherwise, in Berlin there are other bigger tech companies and with remote opening up more and more the salaries tend to increase. Currently the biggest companies in Berlin when it comes to compensation: Microsoft, GitHub, Airbnb, SAP, Wayfair, Amazon, Datadog (Remote), Snowflake, Shopify (Remote), Hubspot (Remote), Spotify (Remote), DigitalOcean (Remote), MongoDB, Stripe (Remote). I wrote an article about it here: https://www.kevinpeters.net/top-tech-companies-berlin-2021 https://www.kevinpeters.net/top-tech-companies-berlin-2021 Most of these companies offer more close to 90-100k or even more (depends on the stock). So it is not FAANG but it gets better and better throughout the years.
  - Escapado 6y ago
    Thanks for your perspective! I had no idea the stock compensation was THAT high. Sheesh I might want to reconsider my current situation! Btw, I should probably not post this but we share the exact same name and work in the same field. :D
- thrower123 6y ago
  That's just not very much money, ouch. At least compared to here in the US where VC money is sloshing around so much, driving all compensation higher. With everything being remote right now, people have been taking jobs on the California wage scale, but living in Peoria.
kristianc 6y ago
Kind of goes without saying also that 250k is going to go a lot further in the Czech Republic than it is in SF. 3000 EUR / month in Prague is going to get you a top end 2/3 bed apartment.
dagorenouf 6y ago
Also, for many people, making $100k as an indie is infinitely more satisfying than making the same cash working for a FAANG.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Right, but the problem is that you're way more unlikely to be making FAANG money outside FAANG.
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    I don't know how true that is, but I'm not sure it matters anyway. Money is nice, but job satisfaction is about much more than total compensation figures. Are you building something worthwhile, something that will help people to improve their lives in some way? Are you building something that is intellectually stimulating, facing challenges that you enjoy overcoming? Are you working in a comfortable environment, where you have positive interactions with pleasant colleagues? Is there a supportive culture, where you are respected as a contributor and trusted to make decisions according to your level of skill and experience? Is there a healthy work-life balance?
- dx034 6y ago
  Making enough money to live comfortably in a place you like is key. It doesn't matter how much it is, if you have family and friends in a low-cost area, even $30k can be more than enough. I believe most people are happier if they can choose where to live and can live there well rather than chasing the highest salary you can get in the world.
m12k 6y ago
Another point is that he is now free to go out and get another job if he wants to, while still getting the ad money from Photopea every year. That's the whole point of building up a passive income stream - once you uncouple the income from actually working, you are then free to do whatever you want with your time - including selling it for a salary like most people so.
anothernewdude 6y ago
At FAANG he'd be living in a place where 200+ is worth way less.
f6v 6y ago
I don’t intend to jump through all the hoops FAANG makes you. Some candidates spend more than one year to get ready for the whiteboard interview.
- freebuju 6y ago
  I don't understand. Is it a cult you are joining?
seba_dos1 6y ago
> it irks me when people say stuff this assuming that an excellent programmer always has easy access to a FAANG ...or assuming that an excellent programmer (or, in fact, just a programmer) wants to deal with FAANG in the first place.
rvz 6y ago
> I'd bet there are hundreds or thousands of genius programmers living in Russia, Brazil, the Balkans, Guatemala and many other countries that simply couldn't land a job at FAANG even if they wanted to. Maybe they know they are just too clever for FAANG companies and can do even better for themselves by starting their own businesses? We have to stop this constant submission to FAANG companies as 'the dream job' when in fact there are smaller companies out there that are just as good as they are and are also extremely profitable. I don't they are interested in the glory days of the 2010s which the FAANG companies were the talk of the town. Fast-forward 10 years, they are now under scrutiny by everyone and it's not looking good for them. It's time to find new and emerging companies that will define the 2020s or 2030s.
- IggleSniggle 6y ago
  > We have to stop this constant submission to FAANG companies as 'the dream job' when in fact their are smaller companies out there that are just as good as they are and are also extremely profitable. I agree! There’s also highly profitable private software businesses that are bigger than Netflix. I work for one. While it doesn’t pay nearly as well as FAANG, it does pay well, and is low-pressure / laid-back (I’m actually thinking about leaving not for better pay but for a faster-paced environment).
mrfusion 6y ago
Regarding not being able to work at a faang: Don’t forget social anxiety where your mind blanks when they put you in front of a white board. Or also simply not being a cultural fit. What if you’re a republican?
Teracotage 6y ago
He reminds me of the oldie irfanview.com from the 90s.
mrisoli 6y ago
Not sure what it's like these days but back when I starting university Google had just acquired a local company and setup their first Latin America office in my hometown(Belo Horizonte), salaries were probably a fraction of its SV counterpart but they were still 5-10x higher than just about any other company in the region. It was notoriously difficult to get in, only way to get an interview was to either have a phd or a masters with an impressive resume, even then you probably needed some connection to refer you. Honestly I hoped their presence would help push local companies to up their game and drive salaries up for developers in a low wage market, unfortunately that is yet to happen 15 years later.
benja123 6y ago
Also there are plenty of excellent programmers that could, but choose not to work in a FAANG for a number of reasons. In Ivan’s case he has clearly achieved success and financial freedom on his own terms, so kudos to him. Many of us would love to be able to do that, even if it meant taking a pay cut.
devwastaken 6y ago
Or simply photopea could have just never been found and became yet another thing to add to a GitHub resume that some hiring manager looks at and says "what's your work experience?"
rospaya 6y ago
> I'd bet there are hundreds or thousands of genius programmers living in Russia, Brazil, the Balkans, Guatemala and many other countries that simply couldn't land a job at FAANG even if they wanted to. I could make more money as a waiter in Germany or Austria than in my devops job in the Balkans, but a) money isn't always the main motivation, especially in Europe and b) the same amount of money goes a lot further than in Silicon Valley. It's not that comparable.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ilrwbwrkhv 6y ago
Also why would a talented programmer or a true hacker want to work for FAANG. The pirate mentality of not working for a big box corpo seems to have faded.
bluishgreen 6y ago
Couple pointers. 1. I have worked for FAANG adjacent companies(similar market cap) in the silicon valley. It is not exactly a badge of honor, sure - if other people want to honor you and you want to ride it why not. But it is not a badge of honor IMO. Horror? Sure. 2. People talk about 200+ guaranteed for a long time now. I think no one has caught on to it yet. Programmers of this caliber can and do pull ~600K regularly in FAANG and FAANG adjacent. If they are capable of people management at the same time (very few at this programming caliber are), then they will be pushed into the executive situation with millions in stock.

high_byte 6y ago

my issue is with that comment assuming Photopea is full-time job. maybe it is idk, but maybe it isn't and he can still work a day job and this is a side business. regardless of FAANG ofc.

sildur 6y ago

> Some people simply live in underdeveloped countries where their talents can't shine and they have no way to get an interview at FAANG Some other people would consider morally reprehensible to be accomplices of FAANG. I wouldn't work for them even if I could. It would be like working for Fox News.

elric 6y ago

I don't know what it's like in other countries, but here in Belgium, if you want compensation that is anywhere near FAANG levels, you have to go the freelance route and charge high day rates. Then we'd have to be talking rates of 1000eur/day or more, which is extremely rare. And if you didn't incorporate, you'll be taking home less than 500eur/day. Which is still three times more than what the average SE employee gets to take home. But it's a far cry from US FAANG levels.

sebastiangraef 6y ago

He is also building an asset which he can sell.

IvanK_net 6y ago

Hi guys, I am Ivan, the creator of Photopea :) I made almost $1 million in the last 12 months, 90% from ads. The rest is from Premium (users paying to hide ads) and licensing a self-hosted version of Photopea. When you start your own project, you never know, if it will ever make $250k a year. But if you get hired, you can be quite sure, that you will never make more than $250k a year. Follow Photopea to see my progress :) http://facebook.com/photopea http://facebook.com/photopea , http://twitter.com/photopeacom http://twitter.com/photopeacom

Winterflow3r 6y ago
Congratulations! I think your story is very inspiring and I wish you and Photopea lots more success in the future!
nakodari 6y ago
Congrats Ivan! Great looking app. Quick question - is this $1 million revenue from Ads alone or does it include subscription as well?
- cinntaile 6y ago
  His comment, that you're replying to, literally says 90% of the $1 million usd revenue comes from ads. The rest, so 10% of $1 million, comes from subscriptions and so on.
  - nakodari 6y ago
    It looks like he edited his comment to add this info. His original comment didn’t include info. Thanks!
secondcoming 6y ago
deleted
- techrat 6y ago
  >Edit: I just checked our systems and you're mainly XXXXX. We've given you XXXXX since the start of the year (before the ad network takes their cut) Are you even allowed to release customer/client info like that?

veidr 6y ago

That, plus the fact that building your own shit, being your own boss, and making your own mark on the world is probably a lot cooler and more satisfying to most of us here than helping sell more ads or get people to watch even more TV.

quickthrower2 6y ago

Does FAANG let you delegate your time to other people. E.g. if I don’t feel like coding today I can just hire someone to do it for me and collect my FAANG salary? Can I sell my job for a million when I’m fed up of it? No? Ok then running photopea is not comparable to a FAANG 9-5

onion2k 6y ago

Besides the fact that he might not want to, I suspect many FAANG companies aren't optimized for hiring developers capable of making something like Photopea. Very little about the hiring process at somewhere like Google or Facebook is about what you can make on your own. FAANGs hire for people who can make a small part of a larger whole incredibly well. That's mostly good for what they do, which often requires deep knowledge of specialist algorithms, but they miss out on hiring generalists who aren't necessarily good at the deep stuff but who can make lots of simple processes work well together. Which,in my opinion, is what you need to be a good front end developer.

sida 6y ago
While I don't disagree with you (and want to start there). I just think photopea is far more than "generalists who aren't necessarily good at the deep stuff". I think Photopea is pretty complicated alogrithm wise too

odiroot 6y ago

> Some people simply live in underdeveloped countries where their talents can't shine and they have no way to get an interview at FAANG And there's a high chance they would be rejected for lack of culture fit anyway. Or fail one of the quirky whiteboard tests.

ThePhysicist 6y ago

Yep, I also have the impression you need a lot more to land a job at a FAANG than to simply be an excellent programmer. The interview process at companies like Google can be pretty byzantine and hard to master without an internal "champion" I heard.

icemelt8 6y ago
A friend from Karachi, spent a few years in USA, landed a job in Amazon on his own, if he can do it, you can too.

tiagod 6y ago

And some people, even if they have the chance to move to the US or some rich city where FAANG has engineering offices, would rather stay with their friends and family at the city they were born and make a lot less.

rijoja 6y ago

Eh I used to want to work for Google, but now I see it about as sexy as working for AT&T. Doing something like this gives you respect and freedom instead.

matsemann 6y ago
Also, working for these FAANGs to get the high salary means moving to the US, which for many Europeans has become undesirable the later years.
- gbin 6y ago
  Do you mean it is bad for their career if they go back in Europe or simply they usually don't like living in the US?
  - dx034 6y ago
    Moving away from home is just not something many people want to do. I don't think many Americans would move to another country with different language and far away from their family, just because they'd get a higher salary.
  - e12e 6y ago
    The US is seen as a bit of a backwards country; poor medical, technologically poor (banking, internet), little paid time off/vacation, no free/cheap higher education, rampant gun violence/domestic terror - on top of that you risk loosing some pension and health benefits in your "home" country if you stay abroad for years. Note that the point with a solid/free education system isn't that kids of rich SEs get free college - it's that society as a whole gets better education - and your kid's friends also have a future/access to education.
  - aloisdg 6y ago
    French here. No way I would leave a society who achieve 35 workweek, minimum wage, 25 days payed vacation and free healthcare. As a programmer I could win more in another country, but I dont want this money if people around me cant live a decent life. Even in France it is quite hard. I wont leave for a lesser country like the US. I want my nurse to be able to do a great work and it means having a good life.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

I'm not sure it would even make much sense for them to work at a FAANG. Running a small entrepreneurial business is so different from succeeding in a large corporation. In one you need to be a master of everything from marketing through to development, in the other you are going to need to be highly specialised to merit a large income. My guess is he wouldn't want to work in a FAANG and they wouldn't want to hire him.

sammorrowdrums 6y ago
Reminds me of this https://mobile.twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 https://mobile.twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 And many other similar stories
jackTheMan 6y ago
I've worked for Amazon and all I had to do is getting permissions from teams and then do some config changes (or similar level programming) in their software. Needless to say year-by-year I forgot everything I've learned before. My CV might got a boost, but my skillset decreased a lot. Only thing what I've learned is politics and how to push and decorate an empty promo doc. I was a braindead when I finally got my stocks. So went back to the startup word, where I could thrive. The average lifespan was like 1 year there, most people did not even wait for the stock so basically worked cheap for amazon.

o_p 6y ago

Its just shocking to think that wasting your talent into making people click more ads for some faceless corp can even be compared to creating something great like Photopea.

NullPrefix 6y ago
>The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks. - Jeff Hammerbacher
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  Worse than that - buy shit they don’t need having been manipulated by big data. Google doesn’t sell clicks it sells expected customer value.
  - rchaud 6y ago
    Google is absolutely selling clicks when an advertiser can perch their website on top of a search query for its competitor.
    - quickthrower2 6y ago
      If I spend $1000 on ads and get zero sales I don’t care about number of clicks. Conversely depending on my market a single click could be worth $1000.
- sfifs 6y ago
  Compared to the best mids of previous generations making things that would blast civilization back to stone age in matter of minutes, I'd say this is progress :-)
  - Hiopl 6y ago
    Except even the most destructive technologies have lead to incalculably valuable advancements for society. This is clearly a step back when we'd rather funnel our best minds into ads rather than things that could in a very real way help advance our civilization. We're going to regret this sooner than later.

JosephRedfern 6y ago

Indeed, it sort of assumes that working at FAANG with a pension plan and 200k+ is what the author should be striving for (the objectively better option), and I’m not sure if that’s accurate. While there are obvious benefits to FAANGing, there’s also a lot to be said for working for a smaller team, or even yourself. Money isn’t the soul (or even main) motivator for a lot of people.

tehlike 6y ago
There is no pension. There is 401k.
- JosephRedfern 6y ago
  Depends where you are. In the UK and much of the EU it’s a pension, as far as I know. Either way, isn’t this mostly semantics? My point is that one persons priorities doesn’t necessarily match with another’s.
  - tehlike 6y ago
    Fair.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Some countries call what Americans call a “401k” a “pension”. Americans use “pension” as short for “defined benefit pension”, meaning you are owed some amount of money every month after the retirement age, and it’s up to the employer to do whatever needs to be done to provide it. Americans use “401k” or “IRA” to refer to a defined contribution pension, one where the employer (and employee) contributes a certain amount into an account that is withdrawn from after retirement. However, the amount the employee can withdraw is subject to however much is in the account when they retire and however much the employee wants to periodically withdraw, so there is no definite benefit amount. I have British family that refer to the latter as a pension, but we would not in the US. I would be surprised if any modern tech company offers a defined benefit pension anymore, even in UK/Europe.

luch 6y ago

Not even underdeveloped countries, I live in a G8 country and there is hardly any significant FAANG shop here. For example if you want to work for Google in Europe it's either UK or Switzerland, which are interestingly the two developed european countries outside of the EU :)

knolan 6y ago
Lots of them have a presence in Ireland too.
- secfirstmd 6y ago
  Yeh and there's are crazy amount of hiring here at the moment. FB, Amazon, TikTok, Stripe, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Salesforces (amongst others) all hiring from Hundreds to a few thousand
  - Normille 6y ago
    Yes. Ireland seems to be pretty much basing its entire economy, at the moment, on attracting huge American megacorps to set up shop in Dublin. Rather than actually investing in producing anything themselves. It's a recipe for disaster. As will become apparent when some other equally strategically placed jurisdiction starts offering even more enticing tax-breaks and the megacorps up sticks and decamp there instead. Then the whole house of cards [and with it most of the Irish economy] will come tumbling down. What a pathetic pathetic country! [and I say that as a terminally embarrassed Irishman]
    - Silhouette 6y ago
      It's a recipe for disaster. As will become apparent when some other equally strategically placed jurisdiction starts offering even more enticing tax-breaks and the megacorps up sticks and decamp there instead. At the moment, if I were the Irish government, I think I'd be more concerned with the likelihood of genuine international collaboration on business taxes than any single rival nation setting up a more favourable tax regime. Even the Biden administration now seems to be acknowledging that this may be the way forward with the need for governments to make up unprecedented economic damage from the pandemic, and if the US moves that way, there is political cover and financial incentive for other governments in the developed world to move that way too.

Escapado 6y ago

I mean even in germany it's not easy. The average salary of a SE here is about 65k before taxes. Most senior engineers I met make about 80-85k before taxes (~50k after taxes) (I am located in hamburg). Even for well booked freelancers about 1 in 10 people make more than 200k a year (140k being the average which results in about 72k profit after taxes). I just had a quick look at google, netflix, twitter and facebook and they don't even offer any SE positions here. Amazon has some in Berlin but they pay around the same salary as stated above.

igeligel_dev 6y ago
Amazon pays a lot more here in Berlin. People in Germany forget to add stocks to the total compensation. Source: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Amazon/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Amazon/salaries/Software-Engi... Otherwise, in Berlin there are other bigger tech companies and with remote opening up more and more the salaries tend to increase. Currently the biggest companies in Berlin when it comes to compensation: Microsoft, GitHub, Airbnb, SAP, Wayfair, Amazon, Datadog (Remote), Snowflake, Shopify (Remote), Hubspot (Remote), Spotify (Remote), DigitalOcean (Remote), MongoDB, Stripe (Remote). I wrote an article about it here: https://www.kevinpeters.net/top-tech-companies-berlin-2021 https://www.kevinpeters.net/top-tech-companies-berlin-2021 Most of these companies offer more close to 90-100k or even more (depends on the stock). So it is not FAANG but it gets better and better throughout the years.
- Escapado 6y ago
  Thanks for your perspective! I had no idea the stock compensation was THAT high. Sheesh I might want to reconsider my current situation! Btw, I should probably not post this but we share the exact same name and work in the same field. :D
thrower123 6y ago
That's just not very much money, ouch. At least compared to here in the US where VC money is sloshing around so much, driving all compensation higher. With everything being remote right now, people have been taking jobs on the California wage scale, but living in Peoria.

kristianc 6y ago

Kind of goes without saying also that 250k is going to go a lot further in the Czech Republic than it is in SF. 3000 EUR / month in Prague is going to get you a top end 2/3 bed apartment.

dagorenouf 6y ago

Also, for many people, making $100k as an indie is infinitely more satisfying than making the same cash working for a FAANG.

StavrosK 6y ago
Right, but the problem is that you're way more unlikely to be making FAANG money outside FAANG.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  I don't know how true that is, but I'm not sure it matters anyway. Money is nice, but job satisfaction is about much more than total compensation figures. Are you building something worthwhile, something that will help people to improve their lives in some way? Are you building something that is intellectually stimulating, facing challenges that you enjoy overcoming? Are you working in a comfortable environment, where you have positive interactions with pleasant colleagues? Is there a supportive culture, where you are respected as a contributor and trusted to make decisions according to your level of skill and experience? Is there a healthy work-life balance?
dx034 6y ago
Making enough money to live comfortably in a place you like is key. It doesn't matter how much it is, if you have family and friends in a low-cost area, even $30k can be more than enough. I believe most people are happier if they can choose where to live and can live there well rather than chasing the highest salary you can get in the world.

m12k 6y ago

Another point is that he is now free to go out and get another job if he wants to, while still getting the ad money from Photopea every year. That's the whole point of building up a passive income stream - once you uncouple the income from actually working, you are then free to do whatever you want with your time - including selling it for a salary like most people so.

anothernewdude 6y ago

At FAANG he'd be living in a place where 200+ is worth way less.

f6v 6y ago

I don’t intend to jump through all the hoops FAANG makes you. Some candidates spend more than one year to get ready for the whiteboard interview.

freebuju 6y ago
I don't understand. Is it a cult you are joining?

seba_dos1 6y ago

> it irks me when people say stuff this assuming that an excellent programmer always has easy access to a FAANG ...or assuming that an excellent programmer (or, in fact, just a programmer) wants to deal with FAANG in the first place.

rvz 6y ago

> I'd bet there are hundreds or thousands of genius programmers living in Russia, Brazil, the Balkans, Guatemala and many other countries that simply couldn't land a job at FAANG even if they wanted to. Maybe they know they are just too clever for FAANG companies and can do even better for themselves by starting their own businesses? We have to stop this constant submission to FAANG companies as 'the dream job' when in fact there are smaller companies out there that are just as good as they are and are also extremely profitable. I don't they are interested in the glory days of the 2010s which the FAANG companies were the talk of the town. Fast-forward 10 years, they are now under scrutiny by everyone and it's not looking good for them. It's time to find new and emerging companies that will define the 2020s or 2030s.

IggleSniggle 6y ago
> We have to stop this constant submission to FAANG companies as 'the dream job' when in fact their are smaller companies out there that are just as good as they are and are also extremely profitable. I agree! There’s also highly profitable private software businesses that are bigger than Netflix. I work for one. While it doesn’t pay nearly as well as FAANG, it does pay well, and is low-pressure / laid-back (I’m actually thinking about leaving not for better pay but for a faster-paced environment).

mrfusion 6y ago

Regarding not being able to work at a faang: Don’t forget social anxiety where your mind blanks when they put you in front of a white board. Or also simply not being a cultural fit. What if you’re a republican?

Teracotage 6y ago

He reminds me of the oldie irfanview.com from the 90s.

mrisoli 6y ago

Not sure what it's like these days but back when I starting university Google had just acquired a local company and setup their first Latin America office in my hometown(Belo Horizonte), salaries were probably a fraction of its SV counterpart but they were still 5-10x higher than just about any other company in the region. It was notoriously difficult to get in, only way to get an interview was to either have a phd or a masters with an impressive resume, even then you probably needed some connection to refer you. Honestly I hoped their presence would help push local companies to up their game and drive salaries up for developers in a low wage market, unfortunately that is yet to happen 15 years later.

benja123 6y ago

Also there are plenty of excellent programmers that could, but choose not to work in a FAANG for a number of reasons. In Ivan’s case he has clearly achieved success and financial freedom on his own terms, so kudos to him. Many of us would love to be able to do that, even if it meant taking a pay cut.

devwastaken 6y ago

Or simply photopea could have just never been found and became yet another thing to add to a GitHub resume that some hiring manager looks at and says "what's your work experience?"

rospaya 6y ago

> I'd bet there are hundreds or thousands of genius programmers living in Russia, Brazil, the Balkans, Guatemala and many other countries that simply couldn't land a job at FAANG even if they wanted to. I could make more money as a waiter in Germany or Austria than in my devops job in the Balkans, but a) money isn't always the main motivation, especially in Europe and b) the same amount of money goes a lot further than in Silicon Valley. It's not that comparable.

deleted 6y ago

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ilrwbwrkhv 6y ago

Also why would a talented programmer or a true hacker want to work for FAANG. The pirate mentality of not working for a big box corpo seems to have faded.

bluishgreen 6y ago

Couple pointers. 1. I have worked for FAANG adjacent companies(similar market cap) in the silicon valley. It is not exactly a badge of honor, sure - if other people want to honor you and you want to ride it why not. But it is not a badge of honor IMO. Horror? Sure. 2. People talk about 200+ guaranteed for a long time now. I think no one has caught on to it yet. Programmers of this caliber can and do pull ~600K regularly in FAANG and FAANG adjacent. If they are capable of people management at the same time (very few at this programming caliber are), then they will be pushed into the executive situation with millions in stock.