5 ms·

Wasn't that the beginning of the end of FAANG's reputation? Having your company put billions into the bank every year because they "don't know what to do with

Wasn't that the beginning of the end of FAANG's reputation? Having your company put billions into the bank every year because they "don't know what to do with it" while you're not even a millionaire is disheartening. I mean, if they were still paying us all handsomely like stock brokers then I bet popular opinion would be on their side.

throwaway6734 5y ago
>I mean, if they were still paying us all handsomely like stock brokers then I bet popular opinion would be on their side. Aren't FAANG salaries still absurd?
- true_religion 5y ago
  Faang salaries are pretty good when you are starting out, but they level of pretty quickly. After say twenty years, my friends on Wall Street are mysteriously richer than I am. Of course the ones who didn’t survive the early treadmill aren’t included, but I guess that’s the trade off. Engineering is fairly stable and well paying, but you don’t get million dollar payouts unless you are a founder.
  - moneywoes 5y ago
    Yep senior engineer is a terminal level
  - eclipxe 5y ago
    That isn’t true.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - bluedevilzn 5y ago
    If you worked at FAANG and survived the treadmill for 20 years, you should be a Principal Engineer/Engineering Director at least. L8 compensation starts at a million dollars per year.
    - true_religion 5y ago
      I’m not really a big fan of total compensation numbers when it comes heavily weighted into stock. After all, if I wanted to be paid for stock performance I would’ve been a stockbroker (and like I pointed out up there, gotten paid way more after 20 year survivorship). Also, I didn’t think it needed to be said but apart from Apple all the FAANG companies are really young, Google is only 23 years old. Back in 2001, they had less than 500 employees. I’m not one of the golden era. If I were, you’d already know my name and I of course would be a multimillionaire.
      - kilbuz 5y ago
        https://twitter.com/anothercohen/status/1343722582206377984 https://twitter.com/anothercohen/status/1343722582206377984 Multimillionaires are not people who joined Google 20 years ago. That's a different league altogether. Multimillionaires are just normal people you've never heard of who work 9-5 and drink beer on the weekends with their friends and have a normal house in South Bay. They joined Snowflake, Square, Airbnb, Lyft, Netflix, or any other of the hundreds of SV companies like those in the last decade, even the last few years. They are the average homebuyers for 1500-2000 sq foot ranch houses in Bay Area right now.
  - kilbuz 5y ago
    My mid-career rank-and-file friends at FAANG have W2 income of $700k-1m a year. These are not high-powered individuals within their org, not even close.
  - mrhands556 5y ago
    20 years working at FAANG your equity should be outrageous compared to other industry SWE.
scarmig 5y ago
If you work for Google as a SWE for a decade and aren't well over a million in net assets, you're doing something wrong.
- paulpauper 5y ago
  a decade...how many ppl work at google for so long?
  - mattzito 5y ago
    A surprising number - sure, google has turnover like everyone else, but in general I am always surprised at how many people have 5+ years of tenure. I work with a number of people where google is the only place they have ever worked, which is downright odd to me.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      They take very good care of their staff.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Note that longevity statistics are also affected by growth. A high-growth company will, by definition, be a short-tenure company. Ironically, it's at shrinking companies that relative tenures often increase, especially as those who cannot (or feel they cannot) compete elsewhere remain. For a company increasing headcount by 35%/yr, half of all employees will have been hired within the past two years, even with no attrition. Statistics under conditions of rapid change are ... counterintuitive. And you'd probably want measures that better indicate length against hire date, or at departure date, or similar factors. In some ways this is similar to the challenge of identifying disease mortality during early phases of emergence as not all cases will have reached conclusion and identification of all infections or instances is likely to be incomplete. Not that I can think of any phenomena where this might be exhibited in the past few years....
adflux 5y ago
> while you're not even a millionare
angelzen 5y ago
We'll soon all be millionaires, nothing to worry about.
paulpauper 5y ago
This is wrong, many employees rich with stock options and other compensation, plus large salaries
- kodah 5y ago
  That's not the majority. It mainly applies to a privileged sector of tech from what I've seen.
- lovecg 5y ago
  Funny how the salaries suddenly exploded after this collusion scheme was brought to light.

throwaway6734 5y ago

>I mean, if they were still paying us all handsomely like stock brokers then I bet popular opinion would be on their side. Aren't FAANG salaries still absurd?

true_religion 5y ago
Faang salaries are pretty good when you are starting out, but they level of pretty quickly. After say twenty years, my friends on Wall Street are mysteriously richer than I am. Of course the ones who didn’t survive the early treadmill aren’t included, but I guess that’s the trade off. Engineering is fairly stable and well paying, but you don’t get million dollar payouts unless you are a founder.
- moneywoes 5y ago
  Yep senior engineer is a terminal level
- eclipxe 5y ago
  That isn’t true.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bluedevilzn 5y ago
  If you worked at FAANG and survived the treadmill for 20 years, you should be a Principal Engineer/Engineering Director at least. L8 compensation starts at a million dollars per year.
  - true_religion 5y ago
    I’m not really a big fan of total compensation numbers when it comes heavily weighted into stock. After all, if I wanted to be paid for stock performance I would’ve been a stockbroker (and like I pointed out up there, gotten paid way more after 20 year survivorship). Also, I didn’t think it needed to be said but apart from Apple all the FAANG companies are really young, Google is only 23 years old. Back in 2001, they had less than 500 employees. I’m not one of the golden era. If I were, you’d already know my name and I of course would be a multimillionaire.
    - kilbuz 5y ago
      https://twitter.com/anothercohen/status/1343722582206377984 https://twitter.com/anothercohen/status/1343722582206377984 Multimillionaires are not people who joined Google 20 years ago. That's a different league altogether. Multimillionaires are just normal people you've never heard of who work 9-5 and drink beer on the weekends with their friends and have a normal house in South Bay. They joined Snowflake, Square, Airbnb, Lyft, Netflix, or any other of the hundreds of SV companies like those in the last decade, even the last few years. They are the average homebuyers for 1500-2000 sq foot ranch houses in Bay Area right now.
- kilbuz 5y ago
  My mid-career rank-and-file friends at FAANG have W2 income of $700k-1m a year. These are not high-powered individuals within their org, not even close.
- mrhands556 5y ago
  20 years working at FAANG your equity should be outrageous compared to other industry SWE.

scarmig 5y ago

If you work for Google as a SWE for a decade and aren't well over a million in net assets, you're doing something wrong.

paulpauper 5y ago
a decade...how many ppl work at google for so long?
- mattzito 5y ago
  A surprising number - sure, google has turnover like everyone else, but in general I am always surprised at how many people have 5+ years of tenure. I work with a number of people where google is the only place they have ever worked, which is downright odd to me.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    They take very good care of their staff.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Note that longevity statistics are also affected by growth. A high-growth company will, by definition, be a short-tenure company. Ironically, it's at shrinking companies that relative tenures often increase, especially as those who cannot (or feel they cannot) compete elsewhere remain. For a company increasing headcount by 35%/yr, half of all employees will have been hired within the past two years, even with no attrition. Statistics under conditions of rapid change are ... counterintuitive. And you'd probably want measures that better indicate length against hire date, or at departure date, or similar factors. In some ways this is similar to the challenge of identifying disease mortality during early phases of emergence as not all cases will have reached conclusion and identification of all infections or instances is likely to be incomplete. Not that I can think of any phenomena where this might be exhibited in the past few years....

adflux 5y ago

> while you're not even a millionare

angelzen 5y ago

We'll soon all be millionaires, nothing to worry about.

paulpauper 5y ago

This is wrong, many employees rich with stock options and other compensation, plus large salaries

kodah 5y ago
That's not the majority. It mainly applies to a privileged sector of tech from what I've seen.
lovecg 5y ago
Funny how the salaries suddenly exploded after this collusion scheme was brought to light.