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Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

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Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#101

Post by loarabia »

drewg123 wrote: post #76

Does it count if you move from one to the other? I spent 2 years as a L5 (Senior SWE) at Google in MTV. I could not negotiate a deal to work remotely under my VP or find a team under a different VP allowing remote work that I was interested in (and which was interested in me).. I left after promotion to staff (L6) and went to Netflix where I work on the Openconnect CDN. Netflix is so much smaller that I feel like I h…

Did Netflix allow you to work remote? I was under the impression they are pretty strict about engineers being in Los Gatos or LA.

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#102

Post by kd22 »

pr0zac wrote: post #72

I was a E5 security engineer at Facebook. Left after 4 years because I married a Canadian, was sick of living in the bay area and FB had no way for me to continue working where I wanted to live. I enjoyed the job a lot but non-career stuff (including allowing my wife to start her career after finishing her PhD) was a higher priority. I moved to Canada and spent two years working remotely as a security manager for Ube…

Can you share some details about the startup? I am from Montreal too.

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#103

Post by tinktank »

q3k wrote: post #2

Freelancing and consulting. It's fun, pays decently well and is fully remote. Left Google SRE because of how mentally draining it was, how draconian the IP clauses were (everything you create belongs to Google!), and how generally I didn't see a future for myself there.

How did you get your first freelancing/consulting customers? Would love to do this, missing the clients.

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#104

Post by mtlynch »

lemming wrote: post #88
mtlynch wrote: post #23

Ex-Googler here. I was a SWE L4 and left after four years in frustration with the promotion process ( https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/ ). Since then, I: * Moved out of my $3.3k/mo Manhattan apartment and bought a home for $200k in Western Massachusetts. Paid in cash so I no longer have to pay rent/mortgage. I feel like my time is much less "metered" now because my annual living expenses are so low, I can pursue…

Great article about the promotion process and the employee dynamic at Google. It very accurately summarises much of why I quit there so quickly after coming in via an acquisition. That conversation made me realize that I’m not Google. I provide a service to Google in exchange for money. I was very lucky to have a friend who taught me that very early (not about Google specifically, the same applies to any company). Wo…

Thanks for reading!

>Since leaving Google, I now make a software product I sell online. I have no boss, no employees and no investors. Occasionally I miss having coworkers, but mostly it's great. Freedom is really worth a lot of money, at least for me.

Yeah, that's the thing I miss most. Not just the social interaction, but being around smart people. Within Google, it was so easy to learn because there were experts in every field imaginable. Outside, there's so much bad information floating around, so if I'm not knowledgeable in a particular area, it's hard for me to distinguish between good advice and cargo cult techniques.

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#105

Post by tinktank »

drewg123 wrote: post #80
sjg007 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure! You could've kept working! Why did you retire?

I'm guessing "because he could". 8 years of L6 at Google should set you up for life if you move to a moderate cost area of the country.

What's the net worth of an L6 for 8 years at Google?

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#106

Post by acconrad »

zabi_rauf wrote: post #57
acconrad wrote: post #21

Does Microsoft count? It's in the same market cap as Amazon and Google. I've been consulting for the past year while I build a few side-projects, hoping they'll turn into businesses. I'm making more than I ever have before and this was only year one. My hope is the next few years the time spent marketing myself through blogs, podcasts, and some books I'm working on will pay off either to make raising money easier for…

Thats great! How did you start with finding consulting projects and building street cred? Has writing blogs bring you more business yet?

The million-dollar question: how do you find clients?

Honestly, the first one approached me via HackerNews. The rest have been from my network.

Blogging has yet to bring me more business, because my name and brand have not reached the mind-share yet to rely solely on that. But I'm working on it!

I also realize that this is a long-term play, it will likely take me 3+ years before my name is reputable enough to be the reason someone hires me from all the places they've seen my name.

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#108

Post by LeifCarrotson »

lemming wrote: post #88
mtlynch wrote: post #23

Ex-Googler here. I was a SWE L4 and left after four years in frustration with the promotion process ( https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/ ). Since then, I: * Moved out of my $3.3k/mo Manhattan apartment and bought a home for $200k in Western Massachusetts. Paid in cash so I no longer have to pay rent/mortgage. I feel like my time is much less "metered" now because my annual living expenses are so low, I can pursue…

Great article about the promotion process and the employee dynamic at Google. It very accurately summarises much of why I quit there so quickly after coming in via an acquisition. That conversation made me realize that I’m not Google. I provide a service to Google in exchange for money. I was very lucky to have a friend who taught me that very early (not about Google specifically, the same applies to any company). Wo…

> I was sitting next to people earning half as much as I was or less, just because I was a contractor and they were an employee.

Was this still true after all the taxes, insurance, and stability factors are considered, or was this just your hourly rate?

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#109

Post by mtlynch »

ploggingdev wrote: post #96
mtlynch wrote: post #23

Ex-Googler here. I was a SWE L4 and left after four years in frustration with the promotion process ( https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/ ). Since then, I: * Moved out of my $3.3k/mo Manhattan apartment and bought a home for $200k in Western Massachusetts. Paid in cash so I no longer have to pay rent/mortgage. I feel like my time is much less "metered" now because my annual living expenses are so low, I can pursue…

> Currently working on toy projects to sharpen my web development skills Could you talk about what those projects are about and what languages/frameworks you are using? What's next? Are you looking to start another business or taking some time to just learn and work on projects that you find interesting? Just wanted to say that I really enjoyed reading your blog posts and forum posts on IH. Good luck!

>Could you talk about what those projects are about and what languages/frameworks you are using?

Sure, I'm working with Angular now. I might switch to Vue.js because I'm not crazy about Angular and I've heard very good things about Vue, but I'm also wondering if I'd like Angular more once I reached proficiency in it.

>What's next? Are you looking to start another business or taking some time to just learn and work on projects that you find interesting?

The project I want to get back to is a keto recipe search engine (https://ketohub.io/). I put it on hold for other projects, but I have more ideas for it and it's a good project for me to stretch my web development skills.

I may also consider projects targeting customers in Western Mass that nobody else is really going after. When I tell people here I'm a developer, many tell me that the software they're forced to use at work is terrible and old but there's no replacement, so maybe I'll find one I can tackle.

>Just wanted to say that I really enjoyed reading your blog posts and forum posts on IH. Good luck!

Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#110

Post by drewmate »

delroth wrote: post #24
branksy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like many companies, yes. However, unlike many companies, they actually have a process where you can submit your "weekend projects" for Google to review and "gain back" explicit ownership of them. Basically Google just checks to make sure it's not competing with anything Google's already doing, and then contractually assigns it back to you. (And anecdotally, if it does compete, you may be offered the opportunity to j…

It's also pretty easy to contribute to FOSS projects on your own time, as long as you're OK with Google being the owner of your contributions (I personally don't care since it's open source licensed anyway). https://opensource.google.com/docs/patching/ is an almost fully public version of the process Googlers have to follow to contribute stuff to open source projects. Disclaimer: works at Google, maintains some FOSS…

Have you encountered any project maintainers uneasy with the idea of Google "owning" that part of the source code? In practice it doesn't matter, but that part kind of confuses me.
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