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I would guess people evaluate their job on money/work/stink axes. All of FAANG pays well, so what's left is whether the work is interesting/important/fulfillin

I would guess people evaluate their job on money/work/stink axes. All of FAANG pays well, so what's left is whether the work is interesting/important/fulfilling and whether the company has integrity/evil issues. Eg you might think F1 has interesting problems despite glorifying fossil fuel cars, or you might think drones are technically challenging despite being used to kill people. Loads of people become nurses and teachers because they want to help people, even though they don't get paid much. What you're less likely to do is work in an area where your work isn't interesting, contributes nothing significant, and rots people's minds. I found it interesting that only half their job offers are taken up, that's super surprising to me. I suppose it's possible that people with one FAANG offer have more than one? If that's the case, all the rest of FAANG would likely have less stink than FB at the moment, and also wins on the work axis.

pedrosorio 5y ago
> only half their job offers are taken up, that's super surprising to me It would be interesting to get some stats on this. But the common advice when applying for jobs is to "get competing offers" so you can negotiate. I wouldn't be surprised if people who are getting offers at FB, can get a few very high quality offers at other places as well.
- loeg 5y ago
  Yeah. Are these the real numbers or the gamed ones? All of FANG seems to play this game where they will not send you a formal offer until you informally accept their informal offer. All to juice the “percent accepted” numbers and to make it marginally harder to play competing offers off each other.
varjag 5y ago
I assume they genuinely struggle with recruiting. Getting cold recruiting mails from FB lately despite being on the wrong continent. They must be scraping the bottom.
- paganel 5y ago
  > on the wrong continent. Afiak they're about to open (extend?) a new office in London, not sure if that's related or not. When one of my friends told me that (he works for a FAANG company) I had a similar reaction to yours: "Where are they going to get the people for that in this market?"
  - Emigre_ 5y ago
    Oh, yes?… Why is that? Is it that hard to find good candidates in the UK?…
  - varjag 5y ago
    I'm not an operations guy, and from what I know development is concentrated in the States.
- 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
  The biggest thing turning me off when they email is that to work for Facebook you MUST have a Facebook account. I deleted mine years ago.
  - new_guy 5y ago
    Dogfooding the product you're working on isn't that unusual even if it is FB. It dramatically improves quality when you're 'forced' to use the same product you're developing.
    - billylindeman 5y ago
      LOL if you can't get your own employees to want to you use your product you might have a problem .
    - jakear 5y ago
      In general, yes absolutely. It becomes more questionable when that product is on the backend of hundreds of thousands of engineer-hours dedicated to optimizing engagement. Bit like saying "sorry bud, we don't want your chemical engineering talent in our meth shop unless you are a meth addict, surely you understand self-hosting enables us to make a superior product"
mrbowow 5y ago
I accepted a diff offer because of rumors about not so great WLB.
wongarsu 5y ago
I imagine some people who don't want to work at a FAANG still apply to leverage that offer somewhere else. It helps a lot in salary negotiations to be able to say "Facebook offered me $X, but I like you guys more, so how about we try to find a way to make that work"
thawSeh6s2p 5y ago
> Loads of people become nurses and teachers because they want to help people, even though they don't get paid much I know it's not the primary point of the post, but define "much". An RN makes around 80k on average, they're also hourly and can generally pick up overtime whenever they want. Nurse anesthetists make double that at minimum, practitioners are north of 120k. It may not be as much as a FAANG position but I'd consider that decent pay, especially for such a stable position with decent WLB(omitting pandemic). Up until the past few years RN only required a 2 year degree. Teachers don't make as much, but average pay in my lower cost of living area, just crossed 60k. That's not terrible, especially considering they only work 9/12 months and can get more for summer school or many of them find side jobs.
- chillacy 5y ago
  FAANG senior engineers get in around 350-400k and with recent stock appreciation some are hitting 400-600 depending on tenure and company performance. Source: levels.fyi
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Which is an exceptional level relative to just about everyone except execs at larger public companies. It's by no means remotely normal.
    - chillacy 5y ago
      Oh totally, but GP never said the words "normal", only "much" > they don't get paid much which is how I suppose we're on the topic of arguing the semantics of "much". I think GP should have said "as much" to clarify, since this is a comparison between two specific jobs.
    - bradleyjg 5y ago
      It’s certainly very good. But many physician specialties are in the same ballpark. Unlike executives at public companies they are a non-trivial size population. There’s also white shoe lawyers, investment bankers, and management consultants but not as many as the doctors AFAIK.
gfodor 5y ago
These aren't independent axes. For example, more money can make it easier to feel like you are genuinely contributing, or rationalize the idea that negative public sentiment isn't real and fake media reports.
version_five 5y ago
> What you're less likely to do is work in an area where your work isn't interesting, contributes nothing significant, and rots people's minds. Have you head of finance? What I think is that most current tech folks started their careers out of genuine interest, and so think along the lines you describe. But now that the money has really arrived, the balance will shift to the type-A aspirational folks who only care about the highest paying, most highly regarded career, and are looking for some FAANG->YC Startup->Management path. These people absolutely are happy to do whatever as long as they get external validation, and would have no compunction about working at FB as long as it keeps them on the track they planned.
- crate_barre 5y ago
  We’ve crossed the Rubican on the injection of type-a’s in this field. The entire Agile layer is one hell of a ruse where they managed to employ an entire group of unnecessary people into what used to be a very natural workflow. I really don’t need a scrum master asking me every morning what the fuck I did yesterday, or size stories every other day. Believe me, I really don’t. I almost want finance to be glamorized again so it can siphon these people away.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
"I found it interesting that only half their job offers are taken up, that's super surprising to me." It is not surprising if the goal is not to fill vacancies or expanding needs, but to prevent competing companies from having these people at their disposal. There will be enough offers to cover every possible person who could do this computer-focused work that might go to work for a competitor. Another explanation is that there is a high attrition rate (e.g., like Amazon) and the company must overcompensate. Thus there will always be high numbers of advertisied positions that are never filled. A third explanation is the company just has too much money and no clear ideas on how to spend it. (Case in point: Metaverse) Companies tend to sustain higher and higher levels of, for lack of a better term, "stupidity/foolishness" as the cash flow increases further and further beyond the company's immediate needs. Having heaps of cash on hand does not necessarily focus the mind; it can have the opposite effect.
- saurik 5y ago
  You are interpreting this to mean "positions", but "offers" normally means a specific person was told "congratulations: we've agreed to hire you! here is what we will pay... are you in?" and so it does seem very strange that half of such offers are being rejected (and then implies the thought process explained of maybe people interviewing for multiple jobs and half the time choosing someone other than Facebook). (I honestly don't know which is "correct" for what is actually happening, but I noticed the disconnect between your two comments.)
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
  It is also possible some of the people rejecting offers do not have another offer pending at the time.
jensensbutton 5y ago
I don't know, I think if you're interested in VR/AR, wearables, computer vision, building products for the "creator" generation, or even crypto (Novi) then FB/Meta probably has the best work pitch of all the FAANGs.
- ajkjk 5y ago
  If you wanted to work on those things I'd think the last thing you'd want is for your work to be owned by them when you're done, though.
  - raydev 5y ago
    Not everybody wants to be a founder or deal with the bad WLB of a startup. It's nice to be paid a reliable 400k/year and work on something you think is cool.
    - dismalpedigree 5y ago
      Facebook…erhm Meta.. makes cool and useful services. My uneducated guess is about 20% of their efforts go to delivering something compelling to the user. The remainder goes to figure out how they can manipulate, coerce, farm, and monetize said users. The problem is the level of perversion they have done and justified due to the need to monetize.
      - ethbr0 5y ago
        I had a guy pitch me on Comcast's tech office once. He said you get to work on cool stuff, but it never actually gets deployed. And that everyone hates your employer, but you'll never get fired. I definitely see how "work on cool stuff" + "don't worry about getting fired" could be pretty cool, if you don't have any investment in really creating things that are used.
        crate_barre 5y ago
        That value proposition of stability is a high for those that have a life outside of work. Why does a typical engineer optimize for leetcode and FAANG salaries? Because they have shit else to establish self respect.
bagels 5y ago
Bay area RNs aren't as poorly paid as you imagine.

pedrosorio 5y ago

> only half their job offers are taken up, that's super surprising to me It would be interesting to get some stats on this. But the common advice when applying for jobs is to "get competing offers" so you can negotiate. I wouldn't be surprised if people who are getting offers at FB, can get a few very high quality offers at other places as well.

loeg 5y ago
Yeah. Are these the real numbers or the gamed ones? All of FANG seems to play this game where they will not send you a formal offer until you informally accept their informal offer. All to juice the “percent accepted” numbers and to make it marginally harder to play competing offers off each other.

varjag 5y ago

I assume they genuinely struggle with recruiting. Getting cold recruiting mails from FB lately despite being on the wrong continent. They must be scraping the bottom.

paganel 5y ago
> on the wrong continent. Afiak they're about to open (extend?) a new office in London, not sure if that's related or not. When one of my friends told me that (he works for a FAANG company) I had a similar reaction to yours: "Where are they going to get the people for that in this market?"
- Emigre_ 5y ago
  Oh, yes?… Why is that? Is it that hard to find good candidates in the UK?…
- varjag 5y ago
  I'm not an operations guy, and from what I know development is concentrated in the States.
0x0nyandesu 5y ago
The biggest thing turning me off when they email is that to work for Facebook you MUST have a Facebook account. I deleted mine years ago.
- new_guy 5y ago
  Dogfooding the product you're working on isn't that unusual even if it is FB. It dramatically improves quality when you're 'forced' to use the same product you're developing.
  - billylindeman 5y ago
    LOL if you can't get your own employees to want to you use your product you might have a problem .
  - jakear 5y ago
    In general, yes absolutely. It becomes more questionable when that product is on the backend of hundreds of thousands of engineer-hours dedicated to optimizing engagement. Bit like saying "sorry bud, we don't want your chemical engineering talent in our meth shop unless you are a meth addict, surely you understand self-hosting enables us to make a superior product"

mrbowow 5y ago

I accepted a diff offer because of rumors about not so great WLB.

wongarsu 5y ago

I imagine some people who don't want to work at a FAANG still apply to leverage that offer somewhere else. It helps a lot in salary negotiations to be able to say "Facebook offered me $X, but I like you guys more, so how about we try to find a way to make that work"

thawSeh6s2p 5y ago

> Loads of people become nurses and teachers because they want to help people, even though they don't get paid much I know it's not the primary point of the post, but define "much". An RN makes around 80k on average, they're also hourly and can generally pick up overtime whenever they want. Nurse anesthetists make double that at minimum, practitioners are north of 120k. It may not be as much as a FAANG position but I'd consider that decent pay, especially for such a stable position with decent WLB(omitting pandemic). Up until the past few years RN only required a 2 year degree. Teachers don't make as much, but average pay in my lower cost of living area, just crossed 60k. That's not terrible, especially considering they only work 9/12 months and can get more for summer school or many of them find side jobs.

chillacy 5y ago
FAANG senior engineers get in around 350-400k and with recent stock appreciation some are hitting 400-600 depending on tenure and company performance. Source: levels.fyi
- ghaff 5y ago
  Which is an exceptional level relative to just about everyone except execs at larger public companies. It's by no means remotely normal.
  - chillacy 5y ago
    Oh totally, but GP never said the words "normal", only "much" > they don't get paid much which is how I suppose we're on the topic of arguing the semantics of "much". I think GP should have said "as much" to clarify, since this is a comparison between two specific jobs.
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    It’s certainly very good. But many physician specialties are in the same ballpark. Unlike executives at public companies they are a non-trivial size population. There’s also white shoe lawyers, investment bankers, and management consultants but not as many as the doctors AFAIK.

gfodor 5y ago

These aren't independent axes. For example, more money can make it easier to feel like you are genuinely contributing, or rationalize the idea that negative public sentiment isn't real and fake media reports.

version_five 5y ago

> What you're less likely to do is work in an area where your work isn't interesting, contributes nothing significant, and rots people's minds. Have you head of finance? What I think is that most current tech folks started their careers out of genuine interest, and so think along the lines you describe. But now that the money has really arrived, the balance will shift to the type-A aspirational folks who only care about the highest paying, most highly regarded career, and are looking for some FAANG->YC Startup->Management path. These people absolutely are happy to do whatever as long as they get external validation, and would have no compunction about working at FB as long as it keeps them on the track they planned.

crate_barre 5y ago
We’ve crossed the Rubican on the injection of type-a’s in this field. The entire Agile layer is one hell of a ruse where they managed to employ an entire group of unnecessary people into what used to be a very natural workflow. I really don’t need a scrum master asking me every morning what the fuck I did yesterday, or size stories every other day. Believe me, I really don’t. I almost want finance to be glamorized again so it can siphon these people away.

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

"I found it interesting that only half their job offers are taken up, that's super surprising to me." It is not surprising if the goal is not to fill vacancies or expanding needs, but to prevent competing companies from having these people at their disposal. There will be enough offers to cover every possible person who could do this computer-focused work that might go to work for a competitor. Another explanation is that there is a high attrition rate (e.g., like Amazon) and the company must overcompensate. Thus there will always be high numbers of advertisied positions that are never filled. A third explanation is the company just has too much money and no clear ideas on how to spend it. (Case in point: Metaverse) Companies tend to sustain higher and higher levels of, for lack of a better term, "stupidity/foolishness" as the cash flow increases further and further beyond the company's immediate needs. Having heaps of cash on hand does not necessarily focus the mind; it can have the opposite effect.

saurik 5y ago
You are interpreting this to mean "positions", but "offers" normally means a specific person was told "congratulations: we've agreed to hire you! here is what we will pay... are you in?" and so it does seem very strange that half of such offers are being rejected (and then implies the thought process explained of maybe people interviewing for multiple jobs and half the time choosing someone other than Facebook). (I honestly don't know which is "correct" for what is actually happening, but I noticed the disconnect between your two comments.)
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
It is also possible some of the people rejecting offers do not have another offer pending at the time.

jensensbutton 5y ago

I don't know, I think if you're interested in VR/AR, wearables, computer vision, building products for the "creator" generation, or even crypto (Novi) then FB/Meta probably has the best work pitch of all the FAANGs.

ajkjk 5y ago
If you wanted to work on those things I'd think the last thing you'd want is for your work to be owned by them when you're done, though.
- raydev 5y ago
  Not everybody wants to be a founder or deal with the bad WLB of a startup. It's nice to be paid a reliable 400k/year and work on something you think is cool.
  - dismalpedigree 5y ago
    Facebook…erhm Meta.. makes cool and useful services. My uneducated guess is about 20% of their efforts go to delivering something compelling to the user. The remainder goes to figure out how they can manipulate, coerce, farm, and monetize said users. The problem is the level of perversion they have done and justified due to the need to monetize.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      I had a guy pitch me on Comcast's tech office once. He said you get to work on cool stuff, but it never actually gets deployed. And that everyone hates your employer, but you'll never get fired. I definitely see how "work on cool stuff" + "don't worry about getting fired" could be pretty cool, if you don't have any investment in really creating things that are used.
      - crate_barre 5y ago
        That value proposition of stability is a high for those that have a life outside of work. Why does a typical engineer optimize for leetcode and FAANG salaries? Because they have shit else to establish self respect.

bagels 5y ago

Bay area RNs aren't as poorly paid as you imagine.