4 ms·

> Chris can expect to make $300k at a non-FAANG company, but nearly double that if they’re willing to compromise on that “no-FAANG” stance Is that really a goo

by zz865 5y ago

> Chris can expect to make $300k at a non-FAANG company, but nearly double that if they’re willing to compromise on that “no-FAANG” stance Is that really a good rule of thumb? FAANG pays double non-FAANG?

rodonn 5y ago
It's not a good rule of thumb. There definitely are some tech companies that pay less than half of FAANG (especially among small startups and eng roles in less tech centric companies), but there are also a lot of companies that have similar salaries to FAANG.
- rodonn 5y ago
  Levels.fyi has a nice chart showing salary ranges at different levels of seniority for a variety of companies https://www.levels.fyi/charts.html https://www.levels.fyi/charts.html
bpodgursky 5y ago
Base comp probably... but the OP is discounting equity almost entirely: > and those are likely to be the kind of complex instruments that I treat as a gamble, not guaranteed salary Idk, opinions vary, but the majority of my early startup total comp in my career has been equity payout. Maybe I just got super lucky, but I think this is too firm a stance and tips the scales against non-FAANG too heavily.
- VRay 5y ago
  Ah, I’ve worked with a lot of people who didn’t hit it big with stock options and suffered ruinous tax liabilities in some cases.. Zero is probably too little, but if you’re being paid way under-market in cash and having to dip into that to exercise options and pay taxes, zero might actually be a good middle ground between the best and worst cases
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    There may be cases I'm missing, but afaik you never *have* to suffer ruinous tax liabilities from stock comp if you're willing to just eat the gains as raw income (making the (often smart) gamble to hit LCTG is what will get you in trouble).
    - abeppu 5y ago
      I hope it's not "ruinous", but I think the other "gamble" that can play out badly is when you exercise and incur a large AMT liability for the year you exercise, but the company may still be years from exit.
    - plorkyeran 5y ago
      It is very difficult to run into ruinous tax problems with publicly traded companies, but it's possible. There's a delay between the vest date and when you can actually sell your shares. Normally this is just a few days, but if something dire happens your stock can still tank in this window. If $100k of RSUs vest and then drop to $0 in value before you can sell, you have $100k of income to pay taxes on, and can only credit $3k of your capital losses per year towards normal income. It is very easy to run into ruinous tax problems with privately traded companies. If you exercise options you have to pay taxes on the difference between the strike price and the current fair market value, and in exchange you've gotten something which is very difficult to sell. You can avoid ever having any tax problems by just never exercising your options until a liquidity event, but that often means letting them expire unexercised.
      - moneywoes 5y ago
        Yikes this sounds like a terrible deal for an employee. How long as these expiry dates? So if I get options in a company at a high valuation and pay taxes on the fair market value at that time and the valuation dips by the time I am able to exercise them, I have effectively lost money? Sorry, just trying to figure this out.
        bpodgursky 5y ago
websap 5y ago
I think there are many other companies now paying or exceeding FAANG. Some of them are - Stripe, Databricks, Coinbase, Dropbox, Uber, Lyft, Twitter (to some extent), DoorDash, Airbnb, etc We no longer live in a FAANG only world. FAANG companies are now trying exceptionally hard to hire talent. A lot of the FAANG perks were in-office, as the world continues to accept the remote first worker, they are only going to have a harder time. As I work from home, I've come to appreciate different aspects of my work, than what I enjoyed in-office.
- hnxs 5y ago
  the companies you listed have been competing with faang for talent since they were formed. they’ve always had to pay competitively
  - websap 5y ago
    Which is the point I'm trying to make. To think that only FAANG companies pay that much is incorrect. Multiple companies are now competing to hire great talent and the only way forward is that they pay competitively. I wouldn't want any engineer to ever consider a job which doesn't pay them a fair market wage.
    - kyawzazaw 5y ago
      I think within these conversations FAANG is just a term to stand-in for those type of companies and not just the 5 listed ones. Maybe FAANG+ would be more explicit and clearer?
      - smorgusofborg 5y ago
        Maybe, but when I say I don't want to work for FAANG, I really mean 3-4 of these 5 companies are definite NO, which biases me against the focusing my skills toward FAANG like interviews. I've worked for companies who are FAANG+ and I would say I can't see any logic in being against FAANG+ companies that doesn't require individual examination of each. Saying you don't want to work for FAANG+ would probably mean you don't want to work for any for-profit corporation or any corporation in the tech industry.
sulam 5y ago
The reason the poster arrived at this is that they are valuing stock options as $0. Of course there are non-FAANG companies with liquid stock, but this seems not to enter the calculation. If you were to consider those, you'd find that while FAANG pays well, it's not _that_ much of a premium. What's certainly true is that stock is a significant piece of the total comp at a FAANG and a startup is unlikely to make up much (if any) of that difference in base salary. For instance base salary for me as an L8 at Google is roughly 1/3 of my total comp.
paxys 5y ago
Not really. I'm sure Google is paying double the salary of some companies, but there's a huge number of companies in the middle of the two as well.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jandrewrogers 5y ago
No, it is not a good rule of thumb. Many non-FAANG tech companies pay at least as much as FAANG; I think it is more the case that FAANG pays a small discount to market based on reputation. For non-tech companies the compensation landscape is more complex and diverse but I know of several cases where software engineers are on top FAANG-like compensation, sometimes straight salary, in unexpected companies and geographies. There is a much larger appetite across industries and geographies to selectively pay top wages for key engineers than there used to be. The median wage may still be lower than FAANG in these companies, they aren’t nearly as profitable, but they are finding significant value in making point investments in engineering talent to lift the level of the organization rather than spraying money at everyone with a money hose. If you can be one of those key engineers, you can ask for the same kinds of money as FAANG and sometimes more (on the basis that working for a non-tech company is less attractive). The off-the-charts FAANG money has been rapidly spreading across the US and also starting to very slowly globalize. It has been crazy to watch.
- dustintrex 5y ago
  You're correct that FAANG salaries are not always incredible, but thanks to the red-hot stock market, total comp can be ludicrous. Many people are earning more from their share program than salaries, and that doesn't even account for capital gains for existing holdings.
pvarangot 5y ago
Kiiiiinda? If you put the unicorns also on the FAANG bag, which I think you should because the type of work you do on those is very similar. Post-IPO you have a liquid stock grant that on FAANG is usually a second salary, bit less bit more depending on the company, role, tenure and performance. Some startups will give you a stock grant that's equally as fat or fatter after IPO, but you have to sit and wait on them to IPO. Non-FAANG public companies in my experience helping friends with offers give slimmer stock grants, like 30% to 50% of your base.
Jensson 5y ago
Last time I checked a really good rule of thumb is that FAANG pays double the median salary for software engineers, no matter where in the world you check. There are however companies all over that spectrum so it isn't like there is a cliff between FAANG and the rest, but it is true that most developers would massively increase their salaries by joining a FAANG.

by zz865 5y ago

rodonn 5y ago

It's not a good rule of thumb. There definitely are some tech companies that pay less than half of FAANG (especially among small startups and eng roles in less tech centric companies), but there are also a lot of companies that have similar salaries to FAANG.

rodonn 5y ago
Levels.fyi has a nice chart showing salary ranges at different levels of seniority for a variety of companies https://www.levels.fyi/charts.html https://www.levels.fyi/charts.html

bpodgursky 5y ago

Base comp probably... but the OP is discounting equity almost entirely: > and those are likely to be the kind of complex instruments that I treat as a gamble, not guaranteed salary Idk, opinions vary, but the majority of my early startup total comp in my career has been equity payout. Maybe I just got super lucky, but I think this is too firm a stance and tips the scales against non-FAANG too heavily.

VRay 5y ago
Ah, I’ve worked with a lot of people who didn’t hit it big with stock options and suffered ruinous tax liabilities in some cases.. Zero is probably too little, but if you’re being paid way under-market in cash and having to dip into that to exercise options and pay taxes, zero might actually be a good middle ground between the best and worst cases
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  There may be cases I'm missing, but afaik you never *have* to suffer ruinous tax liabilities from stock comp if you're willing to just eat the gains as raw income (making the (often smart) gamble to hit LCTG is what will get you in trouble).
  - abeppu 5y ago
    I hope it's not "ruinous", but I think the other "gamble" that can play out badly is when you exercise and incur a large AMT liability for the year you exercise, but the company may still be years from exit.
  - plorkyeran 5y ago
    It is very difficult to run into ruinous tax problems with publicly traded companies, but it's possible. There's a delay between the vest date and when you can actually sell your shares. Normally this is just a few days, but if something dire happens your stock can still tank in this window. If $100k of RSUs vest and then drop to $0 in value before you can sell, you have $100k of income to pay taxes on, and can only credit $3k of your capital losses per year towards normal income. It is very easy to run into ruinous tax problems with privately traded companies. If you exercise options you have to pay taxes on the difference between the strike price and the current fair market value, and in exchange you've gotten something which is very difficult to sell. You can avoid ever having any tax problems by just never exercising your options until a liquidity event, but that often means letting them expire unexercised.
    - moneywoes 5y ago
      Yikes this sounds like a terrible deal for an employee. How long as these expiry dates? So if I get options in a company at a high valuation and pay taxes on the fair market value at that time and the valuation dips by the time I am able to exercise them, I have effectively lost money? Sorry, just trying to figure this out.
      - bpodgursky 5y ago

websap 5y ago

I think there are many other companies now paying or exceeding FAANG. Some of them are - Stripe, Databricks, Coinbase, Dropbox, Uber, Lyft, Twitter (to some extent), DoorDash, Airbnb, etc We no longer live in a FAANG only world. FAANG companies are now trying exceptionally hard to hire talent. A lot of the FAANG perks were in-office, as the world continues to accept the remote first worker, they are only going to have a harder time. As I work from home, I've come to appreciate different aspects of my work, than what I enjoyed in-office.

hnxs 5y ago
the companies you listed have been competing with faang for talent since they were formed. they’ve always had to pay competitively
- websap 5y ago
  Which is the point I'm trying to make. To think that only FAANG companies pay that much is incorrect. Multiple companies are now competing to hire great talent and the only way forward is that they pay competitively. I wouldn't want any engineer to ever consider a job which doesn't pay them a fair market wage.
  - kyawzazaw 5y ago
    I think within these conversations FAANG is just a term to stand-in for those type of companies and not just the 5 listed ones. Maybe FAANG+ would be more explicit and clearer?
    - smorgusofborg 5y ago
      Maybe, but when I say I don't want to work for FAANG, I really mean 3-4 of these 5 companies are definite NO, which biases me against the focusing my skills toward FAANG like interviews. I've worked for companies who are FAANG+ and I would say I can't see any logic in being against FAANG+ companies that doesn't require individual examination of each. Saying you don't want to work for FAANG+ would probably mean you don't want to work for any for-profit corporation or any corporation in the tech industry.

sulam 5y ago

The reason the poster arrived at this is that they are valuing stock options as $0. Of course there are non-FAANG companies with liquid stock, but this seems not to enter the calculation. If you were to consider those, you'd find that while FAANG pays well, it's not _that_ much of a premium. What's certainly true is that stock is a significant piece of the total comp at a FAANG and a startup is unlikely to make up much (if any) of that difference in base salary. For instance base salary for me as an L8 at Google is roughly 1/3 of my total comp.

paxys 5y ago

Not really. I'm sure Google is paying double the salary of some companies, but there's a huge number of companies in the middle of the two as well.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jandrewrogers 5y ago

No, it is not a good rule of thumb. Many non-FAANG tech companies pay at least as much as FAANG; I think it is more the case that FAANG pays a small discount to market based on reputation. For non-tech companies the compensation landscape is more complex and diverse but I know of several cases where software engineers are on top FAANG-like compensation, sometimes straight salary, in unexpected companies and geographies. There is a much larger appetite across industries and geographies to selectively pay top wages for key engineers than there used to be. The median wage may still be lower than FAANG in these companies, they aren’t nearly as profitable, but they are finding significant value in making point investments in engineering talent to lift the level of the organization rather than spraying money at everyone with a money hose. If you can be one of those key engineers, you can ask for the same kinds of money as FAANG and sometimes more (on the basis that working for a non-tech company is less attractive). The off-the-charts FAANG money has been rapidly spreading across the US and also starting to very slowly globalize. It has been crazy to watch.

dustintrex 5y ago
You're correct that FAANG salaries are not always incredible, but thanks to the red-hot stock market, total comp can be ludicrous. Many people are earning more from their share program than salaries, and that doesn't even account for capital gains for existing holdings.

pvarangot 5y ago

Kiiiiinda? If you put the unicorns also on the FAANG bag, which I think you should because the type of work you do on those is very similar. Post-IPO you have a liquid stock grant that on FAANG is usually a second salary, bit less bit more depending on the company, role, tenure and performance. Some startups will give you a stock grant that's equally as fat or fatter after IPO, but you have to sit and wait on them to IPO. Non-FAANG public companies in my experience helping friends with offers give slimmer stock grants, like 30% to 50% of your base.

Jensson 5y ago

Last time I checked a really good rule of thumb is that FAANG pays double the median salary for software engineers, no matter where in the world you check. There are however companies all over that spectrum so it isn't like there is a cliff between FAANG and the rest, but it is true that most developers would massively increase their salaries by joining a FAANG.