I keep seeing posts about engineers who work at FAANG. They seem to love it and that’s great. It also seems like this is some mythical creature to long after. So, what is it? Why is it so great? Seems to me like the pay isn’t much more than what I can make on the East Coast with much lower living expenses. I am currently making 150K as a senior engineer with a $1300 2000 square foot home. Seems to me that relocating for FAANG my costs would skyrocket and I would end up losing money in that deal. Is it the culture? The challenge? The prestige? What is it? Seems like there are a ton of great companies to work for that aren’t FAANG.
One key aspect of a job that good engineers love is one with challenging problems. You can get FAANG comp outside of FAANG, but you can’t always get the impactful interesting projects. Just my 2 cents.
Definitely a very valid point. There are start ups doing some really interesting things though.
Don’t fool yourself. Most people at FAANG work on mind numbingly boring problems. Having run large teams at FAANG, I can tell you from experience. Most of FG are about tweaking ad tools and ad placements to eke out a fractional % gain. And things get increasingly political as you become more senior.
Try to get a job at FAANG and then rent out your house. Give it a try. If it doesn’t work out move back. Can you go back to your o current job? You can make 300k+, which is a lot more. You don’t have to buy, just rent. Having a FAANG on resume will enable you to make more if you move back to East coast.
Are FAANG paying 300K salaries to senior engineers?
Yeah 300k easily, many making much more
You are spot on. It’s just another rat race. If you are happy doing what you’re doing, and making above average pay for where you live, FAANG is nothing to think about. In fact it might take you few years to get to the steady state you are in if you start with FAANG.
It’s a tech bubble over there and yes you’re right there are a ton of other cool companies to work for. As soon as companies have amazing perks people seem to forget the fact that they are just companies run by typically the same type of people found everywhere else. Facebook seems to be loosing a bit of its luster with all the scandals and could be just another tech company. Soon enough there’ll be some other company that’s all the hype perhaps in a new industry.
I’ve been in this tech “bubble” now for over 20 years. Making vastly more than most non-tech. Not really a bubble- for excellent economic reasons.
I don’t think it’s worth it to make it anyone’s life goal to get into these companies regardless of a tech bubble or not. I think this mindset is prevalent on blind and people bang their head against the wall to achieve these goals. It’s only a damn job.
Well I mean they sort of set the bar for SWE comp, being the only companies willing to part with the money to attract talent in an area with exploding housing prices. A handful of Bay Area companies, which may not quite fit the FANG acronym, can offer similar comp to attract talent, so the group technically IS larger than just four companies, but is still an elite group. The resume edge it can give you can sometimes be used to negotiate higher salaries, “he/she worked at Google/Apple/etc”.
Is it sour grapes situation or real discussion?
I promise there are plenty of Blinders who *hate* working at Amazon (and other FAANG companies), but I think this usually translates to either “my boss sucks” or “my work sucks”, especially at Amazon where effectively your whole world is your team. I for one love my team and the work I get to do kicks ass. A great perk of Amazon is also that if you’re in Seattle your salary goes 30-40% farther than it would in SF or NYC, because of cost of living and no state income tax. I agree with what was said above about FAANG: lots of chances to find coooooool work, good pay, and the intangible benefit of having a brand-name that makes folks in your home town stare. Is it necessary for a great well paid job? No. Does it increase the chances? Definitely.
Does Amazon have a good work life balance?
From what I’ve seen, it varies team to team. My team performs well and has a very competent manager, everyone comes in between 9:30 and 10:30, and leaves 5-6 (barring high severity issues, ofc, but they’re rare). I’ve heard of teams that have asshole managers that overload the team and expect every sprint to be “DONE done or else”, where people wfh on the weekend, but I think that’s overwhelmingly the outlier case. All the teams I have personal knowledge of are very reasonable. I think Bezos’ article in response to the Amazon culture scandal is an accurate portrayal of my time in the company. One thing to keep in mind is that most teams have on-call (teams that have services in production). Usually week long rotations, cycling evenly across the team, newbies join in after 6-12 months. This means you get paged when shit hits the fan, so it’s worth it to ask teams you’re interviewing for how much work their oncall is at the same time you ask about wlb.
Well senior engineers at FAANG makes double what you make so...
True, but my living expenses are very, very low.
If you make 200k extra, your living expenses aren’t 200k more if you move. Mb extra 12k -30k more depending on what you want? You are still up a lot.
Besides comp, what also makes these places great is that you as an engineer run the show. In a traditional east coast company, the “Business” team probably calls all the shots.
My impression is that that's fairly high outside the bay area and NY, no?
Many of my friends make around that as senior engineers. The right companies will pay it. Even so, if you work remote finding a gig that pays that kind of money (if you have the right experience) isn’t super hard.
Ookami. Can you give a few examples of such companies and the skillsets they’ll pay for? Thanks