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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?

#301

Post by entropyneur »

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…

You make it sound so easy. I've ran small businesses for most of my career and I've never made more than a quarter of what I currently make working as a contractor (ironically, for a business I once started, now owned by someone else). And most of the time I earned 5-10% of that.

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

#302

Post by pxx »

boxfire wrote: post #212
chollida1 wrote: post #155

Sure, if you work at many hedge fund you'll make similar money, and likely more if you are good at the job and the fund has success. One other nice thing is that instead of restricted stock you get actual money. And generally the money will be locked up for less time than the 4 year vesting that these companies often follow. And on top of that you can usually invest your money fee free in your own fund to help juice…

and probably no where to hide if you want to just rest and vest. "Rest and vest". What a luxury. Some of us are trying to tread water with an anvil chained to the waist. That's what I get for choosing to work for something I'm passionate about. What a world

if you refuse a higher paying job because you would like to work for something you're passionate about, you are explicitly valuing your passion at at least the delta between the job offers.

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

#303

Post by thecleaner »

The work that you do is also different. The level of engg at your avg startup never evolves beyond CRUD shit shovelling. At FAANG its a different story at virtually all levels.

For example at your avg startups you worry about which latest GraphQL technology to learn. As Staff at a FAANG you realize how the graphQL engines work and can pretty much critique the design choices made in each. A Staff at avg startup is more like L5 at Google or L6 at Amazon.

Having said that, relaize that if you become that good at the craft, its better to found a tech startup. Take the example of DGraph if you are looking for a blueprint. You have got founders advantage because of your deep expertise. And tbh, its in the Faang's interest to keep you on the payroll.

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

#304

Post by asveikau »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #272
ska wrote: post #147

Two tried and tested methods, neither guaranteed of course. 1) Be better than the overwhelming majority of your peers, and be noticed for this. You are quite likely to find interesting opportunities come your way. I do mean overwhelming though - small fraction of a percent. 2) Specialize in something most people can’t or won’t do. This includes difficult, obscure, and unpleasant work. In both cases some of the bigges…

Even if you're uniquely good at what you do, a lot of companies won't reward it. You do still have to look hard for those opportunities.

A lot of people who are very good at what they do have a hard time selling it. A lot of people who are good at selling it are not actually accomplishing much. So there is often a gap between perception of high performers and actual high performers.

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

#305

Post by keiferski »

entropyneur wrote: post #301
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…

You make it sound so easy. I've ran small businesses for most of my career and I've never made more than a quarter of what I currently make working as a contractor (ironically, for a business I once started, now owned by someone else). And most of the time I earned 5-10% of that.

I'm not sure how I made it sound so easy, because presumably getting a 250k job at a FAANG isn't easy either. Which is what my point was - if you're going to deal with the time and stress to get one of the most desirable jobs, why not use that same time and effort to build a business?

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

#306

Post by packetlost »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #297
packetlost wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty hard to get into these IME. I'm considered a top-performer at the deep tech company I currently work at, and interviewed at a hedge fund awhile back. The process was way less intense than what I would expect a big tech co. interview to be. I made it to the top three candidates, but didn't get it. In hindsight, the role wouldn't have been a good fit, it was "higher up in the stack" than I prefer to be, whi…

Alot of getting hired into these roles depends on your upbringing/perceived social class by the people at the fund, the school you went to, how you present yourself, whether they want to work with you, how trustworthy you are, etc. The technical pieces are pretty far behind.

Yup. There's a lot of credentialism and in-group stuff. I work with a ton of PhD physicists currently and it's one of those things that you can never quite forget in an environment like this as someone with "only" a bachelor's degree from a no-name college.

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

#307

Post by keiferski »

joshuamorton wrote: post #279
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…

They're probably 2-3x the guy running a local plumbing business doing remarkably fewer hours. And of course it's more accessible. The average guy running a plumbing business is probably 30 something, while people can hit 300k at faang a year or two out of college with like one good promotion.

In what universe is getting a 300k FAANG job more accessible than starting a local plumbing business?

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

#308

Post by totallywrong »

jimt1234 wrote: post #28

Story time: About 6 years ago a close friend with years of software experience was bored with her job and decided to look for another. She received plenty of solid job offers, all with excellent pay, but one of them stood out. It was a company that made back-end software for credit unions. Not sexy work, but what stood out to my friend was the how genuine the people she talked to during the "interview" process seemed…

This would be pretty normal in Europe, my dad went through the same and his job was never a concern. And treatment was fully covered by the public health system. Salaries reflect that of course, can't have it all.

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

#309

Post by mlhpdx »

swarnie wrote: post #24
mlhpdx wrote: post #4

Are you counting the $1m in options as compensation? If so, plenty of startups will offer you that.

Sure they can offer it on paper, unsure if it'll be worth anything in four year or even four months. At least with FAANG you know barring cataclysmic events It'll be valuable down the road.

To each their own. Comparing startup options to mature company RSUs is apples to oranges, and a retelling of the basic trade off between risk and reward. Upside, downside, taxes et. al. combine to inform individual decisions. Both paths have merit. Suggesting startup options are somehow inferior to RSU is simply disingenuous — I would have done much more poorly with RSU than options.

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

#310

Post by joshuamorton »

keiferski wrote: post #307
joshuamorton wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're probably 2-3x the guy running a local plumbing business doing remarkably fewer hours. And of course it's more accessible. The average guy running a plumbing business is probably 30 something, while people can hit 300k at faang a year or two out of college with like one good promotion.

In what universe is getting a 300k FAANG job more accessible than starting a local plumbing business?

That wasn't the question, the question was a 500K faang job vs. a local plumbing business making a comparable amount of money.

I think it's very easy to start a failing plumbing business. I think it far less accessible to start a plumbing business that competes with a FAANG salary.

Put another way: how many people do you know who started their own consumer-facing, bootstrapped business, of any kind and who take home $3-500,000 as CEO? My answer is, like, two and they're both lawyers who didn't start making that kind of income until their mid thirties.

Edit: It would not, at all, surprise me if even in the trades the most common path to business ownership was to take over someone else's already existing business, which would I think cut even further into this point since it would mean the most common path to entrepreneurship is optimizing employment in a small business context.

I think getting a FAANG job is difficult, but for the median 30 year old (who has around $5,000 saved up and limited or no external safety nets), starting a business as your primary source of income is a really good way to bankrupt yourself and not much else, and valorizing that path is actively harmful.

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