5 ms·

When I was at a FAANG, it felt like they had this down to a science. Promotions every 2-3 years. Raises once a year, a few spot bonuses throughout the year, ad

When I was at a FAANG, it felt like they had this down to a science. Promotions every 2-3 years. Raises once a year, a few spot bonuses throughout the year, ad hoc equity grants. People still quit of course, but looking back it felt very retention focused and scientific.

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
I wonder if that was sustainable and the past year of the economy says it wasn't.
discordance 4y ago
Anecdotal, but I’m FAANG and in the process of switching, leveling up and getting paid a lot more elsewhere. There was a counteroffer when I told my present company about the new offer but it was too little too late. It’s well known among my peers that to level up or get paid more, you go elsewhere and maybe even boomerang back later.
roflyear 4y ago
Bonuses at all, nevermind a few a year, sound great. Time to send out resumes. What's the workload at the typical FAANG?
- jamra 4y ago
  So far there is a pretty serious tempo at my FAANG but the complexity is not very high so it’s really simple work in terms of stretching the brain. Lots of working with other teams (XFN) so collaboration is almost as important as execution. Pay is good.
- gsibble 4y ago
  From what I've heard, depends upon the FAANG. Google apparently has good work/life balance. All of them are all about making it through the interview process, which is a nightmare.
  - yodsanklai 4y ago
    lot of preparation, and a bit of luck.
- yodsanklai 4y ago
  Mine is heavy. Working hard and barely meet the expectations. Lot of competition and colleagues are good. Passing the interview is one thing, but staying there is also challenging as they get rid of low performers. (at least my experience).
  - MisterSandman 4y ago
    Tell me you're working at Amazon without telling me you're working at Amazon.
    - dilyevsky 4y ago
      When i started at google a little over decade ago I had to work most nights first year or so just to get that occasional “exceeds”. Interviewing was a breeze compared to that
gsibble 4y ago
They do seem to have it down. Startups on the other hand absolutely do not.
- google234123 4y ago
  You sure? Seems like starts are the place where you find engineers with just a few years of experience getting management roles
  - lvturner 4y ago
    A management role at a startup can be: R&R of Manager Expected to perform as full time IC and pay of an junior
    - google234123 4y ago
      I guess I'm talking about start ups that went from 10s of employees to 100s or 1000s. In those cases I see lots of young engineers leading teams. E.g. when I interviewed at Robinhood in 2020 one interviewer was already an eng manager after she graduated from school and joined Robinhood just 1.5 or 2 years before. I don't think that happens now at Google or Facebook or Apple.
neilv 4y ago
I prefer to think of it like flowers from an SO, just because. "Hey, my valued employee, just thinking about you, and I wanted to send you these additional United States Dollars."
- eschneider 4y ago
  SO's (usually) like flowers. I advocate this approach, mostly because it works. Nothing says 'valued employee' more than periodic raises. And yeah, in the absence of money, additional stock grants have the same flavor.
unicornmama 4y ago
Having worked both sides I agree. The Google Moloch seemed to have a fairest system, of course circumstances could be unfair but the process was fair. Most people who wanted promos and fed their soul to the machine would eventually get promos. Meanwhile in the startup zoo, it’s all about earning favor and avoiding disfavor with a small group of lords.
paxys 4y ago
Yeah, big tech has had it all figured out for a while now. At my company departments would get a target retention number. Going too much under or over that was a problem. If a certain % of employees outside of the top performance buckets weren't unsatisfied with their salaries and leaving, that meant you were paying everyone too much. It's crazy how much science you can apply to HR once you are working at a scale of tens of thousands of employees. At that point people aren't people anymore, just nameless resources to be plugged into an equation. Kinda like the "a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" analogy. Stack ranking follows the same principle.
outworlder 4y ago
Not FAANG but at a large Fortune company you have heard of. Had plenty of promotions, multiple spot bonuses and equity. Not Netflix or Google level comp, but not too far off either. It is a bit manager-dependent(good managers have to stick their hand in the cookie jar whenever it is close by), but I believe that most IT companies have this sort of structure setup. It works too - if you don't know if you are going to get spot bonuses (or equity) at the new place, it becomes far more of a gamble.
jreese 4y ago
And yet it can also be haphazard and misguided too. My experience has mostly been that the general comp level is high enough across the board, but discretionary/additional equity is almost exclusively thrown at high visibility/pet projects of the moment rather than the most important/impactful work that supports all of those fancy projects. Ie, working on infra has some of largest/widest impact in the company, but rarely merits AE/DE because everything is too incremental, difficult to explain the benefits to non-technical partners, or otherwise invisible to leadership at the levels necessary to grant equity. Losing a core, senior engineer from the database or network team can have a much larger technical impact than a random frontend engineer, and yet the bulk of AE/DE goes to flashy frontend product launches.

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago

I wonder if that was sustainable and the past year of the economy says it wasn't.

discordance 4y ago

Anecdotal, but I’m FAANG and in the process of switching, leveling up and getting paid a lot more elsewhere. There was a counteroffer when I told my present company about the new offer but it was too little too late. It’s well known among my peers that to level up or get paid more, you go elsewhere and maybe even boomerang back later.

roflyear 4y ago

Bonuses at all, nevermind a few a year, sound great. Time to send out resumes. What's the workload at the typical FAANG?

jamra 4y ago
So far there is a pretty serious tempo at my FAANG but the complexity is not very high so it’s really simple work in terms of stretching the brain. Lots of working with other teams (XFN) so collaboration is almost as important as execution. Pay is good.
gsibble 4y ago
From what I've heard, depends upon the FAANG. Google apparently has good work/life balance. All of them are all about making it through the interview process, which is a nightmare.
- yodsanklai 4y ago
  lot of preparation, and a bit of luck.
yodsanklai 4y ago
Mine is heavy. Working hard and barely meet the expectations. Lot of competition and colleagues are good. Passing the interview is one thing, but staying there is also challenging as they get rid of low performers. (at least my experience).
- MisterSandman 4y ago
  Tell me you're working at Amazon without telling me you're working at Amazon.
  - dilyevsky 4y ago
    When i started at google a little over decade ago I had to work most nights first year or so just to get that occasional “exceeds”. Interviewing was a breeze compared to that

gsibble 4y ago

They do seem to have it down. Startups on the other hand absolutely do not.

google234123 4y ago
You sure? Seems like starts are the place where you find engineers with just a few years of experience getting management roles
- lvturner 4y ago
  A management role at a startup can be: R&R of Manager Expected to perform as full time IC and pay of an junior
  - google234123 4y ago
    I guess I'm talking about start ups that went from 10s of employees to 100s or 1000s. In those cases I see lots of young engineers leading teams. E.g. when I interviewed at Robinhood in 2020 one interviewer was already an eng manager after she graduated from school and joined Robinhood just 1.5 or 2 years before. I don't think that happens now at Google or Facebook or Apple.

neilv 4y ago

I prefer to think of it like flowers from an SO, just because. "Hey, my valued employee, just thinking about you, and I wanted to send you these additional United States Dollars."

eschneider 4y ago
SO's (usually) like flowers. I advocate this approach, mostly because it works. Nothing says 'valued employee' more than periodic raises. And yeah, in the absence of money, additional stock grants have the same flavor.

unicornmama 4y ago

Having worked both sides I agree. The Google Moloch seemed to have a fairest system, of course circumstances could be unfair but the process was fair. Most people who wanted promos and fed their soul to the machine would eventually get promos. Meanwhile in the startup zoo, it’s all about earning favor and avoiding disfavor with a small group of lords.

paxys 4y ago

Yeah, big tech has had it all figured out for a while now. At my company departments would get a target retention number. Going too much under or over that was a problem. If a certain % of employees outside of the top performance buckets weren't unsatisfied with their salaries and leaving, that meant you were paying everyone too much. It's crazy how much science you can apply to HR once you are working at a scale of tens of thousands of employees. At that point people aren't people anymore, just nameless resources to be plugged into an equation. Kinda like the "a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" analogy. Stack ranking follows the same principle.

outworlder 4y ago

Not FAANG but at a large Fortune company you have heard of. Had plenty of promotions, multiple spot bonuses and equity. Not Netflix or Google level comp, but not too far off either. It is a bit manager-dependent(good managers have to stick their hand in the cookie jar whenever it is close by), but I believe that most IT companies have this sort of structure setup. It works too - if you don't know if you are going to get spot bonuses (or equity) at the new place, it becomes far more of a gamble.

jreese 4y ago

And yet it can also be haphazard and misguided too. My experience has mostly been that the general comp level is high enough across the board, but discretionary/additional equity is almost exclusively thrown at high visibility/pet projects of the moment rather than the most important/impactful work that supports all of those fancy projects. Ie, working on infra has some of largest/widest impact in the company, but rarely merits AE/DE because everything is too incremental, difficult to explain the benefits to non-technical partners, or otherwise invisible to leadership at the levels necessary to grant equity. Losing a core, senior engineer from the database or network team can have a much larger technical impact than a random frontend engineer, and yet the bulk of AE/DE goes to flashy frontend product launches.