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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?

#371

Post by poikniok »

sulam wrote: post #227
oarla wrote: post #185

Tangential to this topic, but are there publicly traded companies that pay only in stocks? I'm curious to know if someone who gets paid only in stocks will come out ahead in terms of taxes they owe than someone getting a comparable base pay.

Actually yes, but you won’t find engineers compensated that way. Usually it’s the CEO. They will take a symbolic base salary (often they will say $1 but HR forces it to be minimum wage behind the scenes) and get paid with stock. The trick is that it’s not RSUs, so not regular income. Instead it’s some form of option (I am not a tax attorney so I hesitate to state the type of option, there’s a variety of them that are…

How is that a trick? You wouldn't actually have any income ...

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

#372

Post by Maxatar »

xeromal wrote: post #361
Maxatar wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to agree with the ridicule point, but honestly ridicule also deters other people from making a similar mistake. I agree ridicule should be used cautiously, but in a case like this where someone speaks so confidently and boldly gives advice on a topic they clearly do not understand, I think ridicule is a good way not only to inform them, but also indicate to others that it's not okay to give people this kind of…

I have nothing to back this up but the reason I'm sensitive to ridicule as an initial reaction is that I believe it causes people to shy away and there's potential that they surround themselves with other ridiculed people and now you have a group that is intentionally dense and now powerful. Education should always be the first step. I grew up in rural appalachia and the amount of grief than the uneducated get there…

That is an excellent and profound point and one I can admire. Thanks for sharing it.

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

#373

Post by y-c-o-m-b »

angarg12 wrote: post #232

I just wrapped up a long job search process, where I got offers from a handful of companies. I currently work at FAANG, so I was looking for a pay bump. The only companies that could beat my current comp are other big tech and finance, but there were a couple of surprises along the way. For example, a Tier 3 (i.e. you never heard about them) company offered me 450k TC for a Staff level position. This compares to the…

What in the world... I'm a FAANG employee - I think I'm around 18 years of experience now (I stopped counting) - with a great resume (or so I'm told), and I can't even get 100K jobs to respond to me let alone FAANG jobs. I'm talking about the initial step too; I've had zero interviews or screenings.

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

#374

Post by jt2190 »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #344
arrosenberg wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a tiny business, you just need an indemnity clause. If you have employees, you pay for E&O insurance. Im not saying any of this is obvious, but if you are applying to work at a FAANG, I will assume you are both smart enough and ambitious enough to do a bit of research.

"Just" an indemnity clause. First, you don't really know whether that'll hold up in court until it happens. Second, by the time you're done with the court case, you'll have spent a tremendous amount of time and energy. Not only is that stressful by itself, it's also a big distraction from running the business, and every day you are busy with the court case you'll wish you were spending time working your business. The…

This ignores the fact that nothing is stopping someone from suing you personally today, small business owner or not.

There are two types of people who sue:

- rational actors who have acted in good faith, exhausted all avenues of recourse, and feel like the courts are their only hope for some sort of resolution.

- irrational actors who sue for weird personal reasons, can’t be reasoned with, refuse all attempts to come to a reasonable settlement, etc.

You definitely want the first type of person as a customer.

Again, nothing is stopping anyone from suing you personally right now.

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

#375

Post by ak_111 »

keiferski wrote: post #242
epicureanideal wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean a SAAS that solves a boring problem for other businesses with money to spend. Profitable software-based ideas are increasingly difficult to find. Thousands of people are exploring every niche and trying to start startups in them, which is great, but competition is fierce and unexplored niches are shrinking. And of course, it's still not straightforward even if you find a relatively unexplored niche. Most peo…

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.

50% of those places are using excel and outdated tech because they have 0 budget to spend on tech no matter how good the replacement (in fact even if it is cheaper, approving the alternative is too painful a process), "their problem" is not that nobody had solved their actual problem but trying to convince someone upstairs to approve spend on an alternative solution.

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

#376

Post by ptmcc »

juujian wrote: post #124

I know this is a tangent, but, and I'm putting words in your mouth, is it so important to earn a FAANG salary? And yes, I know, it helps with negotiating salaries but that's circular. Maybe that's just the state of the job market, no desirable jobs left, only thing we can hope for is a high salary?

More money now means less/no work later, whether its something more flexible or just earlier retirement.

With the way compounding works, highly paid years when you're young and can invest much of it sets you up for financial independence and much less money stress for the rest of your entire life, no matter what you want to do. I don't worry about getting fired or laid off or the stress of finding the next job because there is no financial stress about it.

Plus in my career so far, the best paying jobs have also been the best culture and WLB. People incorrectly think these big tech jobs are a constant long hours grind. IME, the absolute worst working hours and culture have been in startups and small businesses, with lower comp and equity lottery tickets with an EV of 0.

I'm not a maximize comp at all costs robot, but it's a big big factor. I'm selling my time and labor and I want to get a good value for it while I can. There's no guarantees these 300k+ years will continue. Get it while the gettin's good.

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

#377

Post by rconti »

orochimaaru wrote: post #189
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…

[flagged]

This is a completely incorrect understanding of tax brackets. If you make $1 more than your 'old' bracket, you only get taxed 32% on that $1.

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

#378

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

reaperman wrote: post #203
orochimaaru wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[Edited to remove snark/barbs as per HN guidelines]. I am genuinely curious though - you seem like you've had a successful career and life. I typically assume people in your position are rather familiar with the basic math behind personal taxes, 401k's, HSA's, child tax credits, standard deductions vs. large charitable deductions, etc. I think I may have been grossly mischaracterizing a potentially large group of peo…

Well, there is a grain of truth to his words. Over certain income, you are no longer qualified for food stamps, medicaid and section 8, so you are better off earning less.

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

#379

Post by angarg12 »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #373
angarg12 wrote: post #232

I just wrapped up a long job search process, where I got offers from a handful of companies. I currently work at FAANG, so I was looking for a pay bump. The only companies that could beat my current comp are other big tech and finance, but there were a couple of surprises along the way. For example, a Tier 3 (i.e. you never heard about them) company offered me 450k TC for a Staff level position. This compares to the…

What in the world... I'm a FAANG employee - I think I'm around 18 years of experience now (I stopped counting) - with a great resume (or so I'm told), and I can't even get 100K jobs to respond to me let alone FAANG jobs. I'm talking about the initial step too; I've had zero interviews or screenings.

That sounds odd. With that much experience you should at least be getting offers in the 200k range easily. Are you cold applying or using referrals? I found these days CVs get screened by software that's very sensitive to keywords, and it's very easy to get auto-rejected.

I documented my process of getting job offers here, you can check it out in case it helps

https://www.teamblind.com/post/My-experience-getting-offers-...

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

#380

Post by StopTheWorld »

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.

I worked with a guy who went to a public university - not a top 25 public university but in the ballpark. He was hard-working, smart and "got it", but he wasn't at the level of some super-geniuses I met coming out of school. He worked with us (Fortune 100, non-FAANG, non-tech, non-big metro) as a junior SWE for a year and did not get promoted as he desired. He jumped ship for a FAANG-adjacent company after a year working for us, and his TC jumped from He is smart but not a genius. He kind of knows what is going on though, he "gets it". Probably even more motivated than smart, but not insanely motivated. Motivated enough to learn how to get features done at a brisk pace, take ownership of his team's work, and to study for interviews. Didn't go to a top tier CS program, didn't come out of FAANG or FAANG adjacent, and probably took a detour working for us, but three years later his TC is over $300k. He also had the luck to jump ship before the FAANG layoffs of late 2022.
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