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50 comments so far and nobody has named a single company. You might as well not post if you’re just going to be vague and coy. “They exist, trust me bro” and “I work in a medium sized company that does…” are pretty much a zero-value comments. HN should have a higher bar.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s not just salary. The "not just salary" bit is very often used as a mirage intended to fool employees to take a lower compensation than what they can get, and then tag a bunch of conditions that can't possibly or realistically be met.
Members of my family have serious health problems, and the company’s PPO plans cover medical treatments with world-class providers. It would probably be prohibitively expensive for us to purchase such a plan on the open market.
Instead of being indentured by spending company scrip at the company store you're staying because of health insurance that would otherwise be unaffordable to you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft is not FAANG.
Is that because it's actually that different, or because it would mangle the acronym?
Yes, I'm working in the UK for a medium size company and gets the same as my friend that works for Google(he does get slightly higher bonuses) But I work 35 hrs a week while he works 45 and fly abroad every two weeks.
I'm under the impression that Google/Microsoft etc get paid far less in the UK than in the US though, would you say that's correct? I've been working in the UK since the late 90s. Started in banking and banking contracts are still probably the primary source of big cash in the UK as there aren't many startup and much less FANG. I moved away from banking pretty quickly as I didn't really want to stay in London much lo…
In France its basically like they don't want a tech sector. Employee's rights are skewed so far to the left that Employers are often hamstrung and startup-culture is completely stagnant. Even running a Cafe you can end up paying an employee for a year or two who literally can't or won't show up for work.
In short though, Ireland/UK/Belgium are the highest paying areas for tech in Europe outside of a few select Financial/Banking enclaves in Geneva and Zurich, with the majority of non-FAANG Seniors capping out at €120k or thereabouts without going into the niche areas like SRE or Algo or Cloud Architect.
According to levels.fyi, FAANG only pays the most at the most experienced levels. I'm not sure if those are even hired for, they might be promoted into. Of the rest, the top paying ones seem to be fintech and AI startups. Only Netflix still scores high in top salaries. It would make sense too, as they have a lot of leverage. Lots of people joining are happy to take a cut just to have the FAANG name on their resume. A…
Foreign companies setup offices in the USA to attract ex-FANGA engineers, and thus are willing to compete on compensation, with the additional benefits of being publicly traded,.
Which foreign companies are paying FAANG rates? Outside of Chinese ones I can't see that happening much. Why pay easily 50-200% more for US talent when they can often get solid talent in Japan / Europe / China / etc. Outside of a small business and localization team, why bother?
I’m aware of a couple people at health systems/hospitals that work maybe 400 hours/year making $500k+/year. Experts in legacy languages, specifically COBOL and MUMPS. For legacy billing and EMR/EHR and related systems code, respectfully. One guy gets flown out to the east coast from his ”chateau” in Utah every month or two; the only downside is he’s on-call pretty much all year round. I’ve heard banks have people lik…
it'a catch 22 with some of those companies. 1. they don't hire often & usually have small teams 2. they make so much money, that they don't make noise about it. & you won't hear about them, unless one day you randomly run into one of their employees saying they're hiring on reddit / hn 3. they work in unsexy industries or high risk stuff e.g gambling 4. they're usually located in places you wouldn't expect
What are some examples of unsexy industries that are high paying?
AI/ML unicorns.
Anthropic and OpenAI are pretty good because they offer huge comp packages, but many of the others are mediocre because there's limited upside to their stock (rather than raising at a $50m valuation, they might raise at a $1B valuation. A $4B exit is much more life changing when you own 20x as much of the company. And they're very risky.)