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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?

#331

Post by eloisant »

brigadier132 wrote: post #266
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.

Especially a business that will get you the same revenue as a FAANG job.

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

#332

Post by wocram »

dazh wrote: post #179
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…

YMMV but the one hedge fund offer I got required putting 50% of the bonus into the fund itself, which then vests out over 4 years. I was told this is industry standard, so it's analogous to the 4 year RSU vesting you'd get at FAANG.

Usually the deferred bonus is paid out to you if you leave, so it's a little bit different than an RSU grant.

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

#333

Post by whynotmaybe »

harimau777 wrote: post #244
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…

How do you get the startup capital to do this? At least in the area where I have know how it would cost at least a million to get the space, hardware, raw materials, and employees to start turning out products. Then you would need money for marketing and logistics.

Depending on where you are, you can often find gov support to start your business. (Here in Canada, this support can be grants, loans or event free experts time.) When it's gov monetary support, you usually have to bring 50% of the total amount.

Otherwise, you can contact incubators like YC. If they approve your idea and grant you money, you can then easily apply for loans at banks because you've been vetted by a well known company.

After all that energy spent, you will understand the quote :

> Everyone has an idea. But it’s really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you work on the idea.

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

#334

Post by dayvid »

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…

Different skillsets involved. You will eventually have to give up programming and focus on developer sales/marketing/recruiting skills.

Very rare to see businesses where you're sole developer and salesperson unless you are the main SME on a niche field/technology you probably developed.

Also A LOT of FAANG is immigrants who can't start a business in the US or children of immigrants whose parents put strong pressure on them having an upper middle class job.

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

#335

Post by mettamage »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #208

Civil servants living in the DC or SF metro areas max out at about $195k not including benefits. The benefits include an actual pension, really good health insurance, and 1-1 salary matching into a 401(k)-like retirement fund (the TSP). Also, you're actually expected to work 40 hours a week and generally not more, and you're expected to take all your vacation. It takes a while to get to that level, or you need to get…

This is being a software engineer?

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

#336

Post by phonerphone »

keiferski wrote: post #268
epicureanideal wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Which country did you do this in? I will need a similar service soon

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

#337

Post by alephnerd »

ryandrake wrote: post #320
alephnerd wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E6 is adjacent to Engineering Manager at Meta. Companies give the option to either go Management Track (Manager, Director VP) or Technical Track (Principal/E6, Fellow, Distinguished Engineer) In public companies, most Engineers will peak at the L5/L64/SDE3/E5 level by their 30s. > Plenty of data on other companies offers there Plenty of companies offer that kind of compensation, but the competition is intense as the…

> If anyone thinks they deserve a L6/L7 role with less than a decade of experience at peer companies they need to adjust their expectations or remain unemployed I think a lot of HN commenters simply assume that every role at these companies is L6/L7+ and pays $1M/yr or whatever the meme is currently. Like it's the default for "Software Engineer" at these companies. In reality, these roles are exceedingly rare. You wo…

> Your median FAANG employee is probably L4 and not making $1M/yr in compensation. They're probably not even making $150K, depending on their location

While OP overestimates salaries, you are doing the opposite and underestimating salaries for most mid-career SWEs working a Software companies in the US.

Most L4/5 equivalent engineers across the US will end up earning around $150-250k Base, 10-20% Bonus, and around $50-150k/yr in stocks assuming they are working for a Software Company as a SWE (eg. Salesforce in Indianapolis or VMWare/Broadcom in RTP or Denver - let alone the Bay Area, Seattle, Austin, and NYC scene).

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

#338

Post by scosman »

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…

> your best bet is to learn how to start and run a business

Startups are so hit and miss. It's really really hard to make $500k a year at a startup. There's many years of zero, near zero or sub-intern salary. After that there's either failure or a big payout that dwarfs the FAANG salary.

Classic businesses can get a substantial salary sooner than a startup, but do have a ceiling. If you're selling a well known need (plumbing, consulting, etc), there's competition and a ceiling at hours worked.

Having done both, a FAANG job is infinitely less effort than running a company. Also lower stress, lower risk, and immediate rewards/pay. I still have more fun starting companies though!

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

#339

Post by cvwright »

dannyphantom wrote: post #284
epicureanideal wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main issue is that their problems are too boring and obscure for anyone without direct personal experience to care about them. I think there are probably several hundred HN readers who would be happy to tackle those problems. Boring is probably not the issue, but obscure is, assuming these problems exist. If they're difficult to discover that the problem exists, that's a challenge. Further, if the problems exis…

Your comment reminded me of a cool little project I found a few years ago re: niche problems and smaller solutions - the target demo being soldiers who (very generally) have some disposable income to spend on a small app that can improve their professional QoL was kind of genius imo. There was (still is, though the website is now dead) a really cool website/app that a fmr Air Force soldier made called AFI SWiM[0] tha…

Your story supports the position that it's safer to take the FAANG job.

This guy found an underserved market opportunity, built something, got some success marketing it, and made a whopping total of $40k.

Meanwhile the FAANG guys are making that every two months, without all the risk.

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

#340

Post by lowbloodsugar »

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…

I don’t see why so many people try so hard to be a professional football player when they could just as easily start a business launching rockets into space.

The one has got nothing to do with the other. Running a small business is far more sales and marketing, and if you are lucky enough to get to the point where you need to hire someone, then HR, managing suppliers and fuck me don’t get me started on fucking customers.

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