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Ask HN: Is it possible to make FAANG salaries without working there?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to make FAANG salaries without working there?

#261

Post by thayne »

unregistereddev wrote: post #176

Anecdote: I'm a Sr. Staff Engineer at a large employer in a LCOL city. Typical middle class houses cost $300k - $500k here, with luxury houses costing roughly $1m and small starter homes costing $200k (just using real estate as a rough proxy for cost of living). My base salary is $150k/yr. My cash bonus maxes out somewhere around $80k/yr, and typically falls in the $50k - 70k range. I also receive equity worth roughl…

> Typical middle class houses cost $300k - $500k here, with luxury houses costing roughly $1m and small starter homes costing $200k (just using real estate as a rough proxy for cost of living)

That used to be the case where I live, just a few years ago. Now what used to be a starter home is over $400k.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to make FAANG salaries without working there?

#262

Post by reaperman »

brodouevencode wrote: post #246
reaperman wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently this belief is far more common than I thought. I expected it to be closer to the percentage of Americans who think the Earth is flat (10%)[0]. Evidently 50% of Americans[1] believe you pay your highest marginal rate on all of your income. I'm blown away, and genuinely humbled. I don't understand how someone can get a Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac home loan, raise children, have a long and successful career and no…

It was preached to me that this was how it worked since I started working in the mid-90s. I didn't learn better until an accountant friend clarified that when I got him to do my taxes when I started making real money in the mid-00s. I dare say that it was probably the most common understanding until fairly recently. The internet has probably helped a lot with that. That is to say, if you're of a certain generation yo…

I guess it's a fair assumption you never once attempted to calculate your own taxes in the first decade of filing taxes? Did you just drop some papers off to an accountant the first year that you reached adulthood?

I've used an accountant occasionally, but only when I had genuinely confusing tax issues involving international work or work across many states where I wasn't sure whether there existed a "nexus" that required me to pay taxes in State A or State B. Even then I did my best to double-check their work, and often caught errors/omissions. Most of my friends also do their own taxes (and have since 2006), regardless if they were line cooks or painters or engineers or MBB consultants. So I'm just not familiar with the lifestyles that lead to this.

I'd actually understand it more for people who've entered the workforce since 2005, because TurboTax/etc became much more popular. I did taxes with my dad in the mid-90's before most homes had internet, and back then it seemed far more likely that people would understand how taxes worked, because there wasn't super-easy software to do it for you.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to make FAANG salaries without working there?

#264

Post by jgwil2 »

reaperman wrote: post #233
brodouevencode wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~Calm down. It's a common misconception.~

Apparently this belief is far more common than I thought. I expected it to be closer to the percentage of Americans who think the Earth is flat (10%)[0]. Evidently 50% of Americans[1] believe you pay your highest marginal rate on all of your income. I'm blown away, and genuinely humbled. I don't understand how someone can get a Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac home loan, raise children, have a long and successful career and no…

Well around 40% of households don't pay federal taxes at all, and presumably a large chunk of those who do are in the lowest tax bracket so they might not ever need to know how it actually works.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to make FAANG salaries without working there?

#265

Post by phpnode »

amonith wrote: post #225
some_random wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk is that if you ever want to leave the gambling industry you'll be the candidate who made their living swindling vulnerable people.

Really interesting how this is viewed in different countries. How far does this go? Does this include Gacha game devs? How about people working on loot boxes in gaming (like finance/marketing people who come up with new boxes)? Or NFTs or crypto in general? I wouldn't even thought to think about people coming from gambling companies differently.

I live close to a city with a bunch of gambling companies and yeah, devs at those companies are definitely judged for their choices, similar to people who work for crypto / NFT companies. It has a reputational risk similar to working for porn companies (but less severe).

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to make FAANG salaries without working there?

#266

Post by brigadier132 »

keiferski wrote: post #221

It's interesting how so many people have an aversion to being a business owner / entrepreneur, and will instead put in so much effort to optimize being a well-paid employee, instead of learning how to start and run a business. These salaries listed are great salaries, no doubt, but they are not dramatically more than say, a guy running a successful local plumbing business. And the ceiling is limited as an employee, w…

Building a business is really hard.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to make FAANG salaries without working there?

#267

Post by brigadier132 »

keiferski wrote: post #241
Rinzler89 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> instead of learning how to start and run a business Because the stress and risks of running a small business as a solo inexperienced first time business owner are insane compared to a regular 9-5. Especially if you start hiring other people, your liability then increases 10 fold as now anything can happen with them (sick leave, absenteism, low performance, sabotage, etc) but you're still bound to the same deadlines…

I get that, but if you’re trying to get a job at one of the best paying companies in the world, is the stress level actually that different? And there are plenty of examples (search on HN for them) of people running one person internet businesses and making a healthy living.

Im doing both and yes its very different. The stress at the big companies is nothing.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to make FAANG salaries without working there?

#268

Post by keiferski »

epicureanideal wrote: post #259
keiferski wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say this but I don’t buy it at all. If anything, it feels like the vast majority of the business world is still operating on some combination of Excel and a software program that was outdated a decade ago. The main issue is that their problems are too boring and obscure for anyone without direct personal experience to care about them.

If you know of some boring, obscure market niches that are also likely to be profitable, meaning the cost of customer acquisition is easily less than the profit per customer, and is scalably solved with a software product, please either share with HN readers, or at least offer to sell them to us. They say ideas are worth nothing, but not to me. If you really have some good ideas (see definition above), I would be int…

Here's one that I have dealt with personally: paying taxes as an American that lives abroad (and wants to use the foreign income exclusion) is a nightmare filled with misinformation and tedium.

I don't know if this is actually a market worth pursuing, but I do know that I paid some company $500 to fill in a form for me and help figure out the process. They probably spent an hour or two on my case.

With the increase of dual citizens, digital nomads, etc. this seems like a growing market to me.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to make FAANG salaries without working there?

#269

Post by swiftcoder »

reaperman wrote: post #233
brodouevencode wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~Calm down. It's a common misconception.~

Apparently this belief is far more common than I thought. I expected it to be closer to the percentage of Americans who think the Earth is flat (10%)[0]. Evidently 50% of Americans[1] believe you pay your highest marginal rate on all of your income. I'm blown away, and genuinely humbled. I don't understand how someone can get a Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac home loan, raise children, have a long and successful career and no…

It seems to be advantageous to a significant portion of the political class that people hold this misconception - this type of misconception explains much of the widespread public support for tax breaks for the ultra-rich...

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to make FAANG salaries without working there?

#270

Post by keiferski »

brigadier132 wrote: post #267
keiferski wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that, but if you’re trying to get a job at one of the best paying companies in the world, is the stress level actually that different? And there are plenty of examples (search on HN for them) of people running one person internet businesses and making a healthy living.

Im doing both and yes its very different. The stress at the big companies is nothing.

Sure, I get that. But are the people trying to maximize income as an employee really looking for the low stress route in the first place?

I suppose I should have qualified my comment by saying it's if your primary aim is to maximize income.

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