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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?

#381

Post by anticorporate »

tiffanyh wrote: post #247
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…

Statistically, you'll make more money working for someone else than working for yourself (and have a better work/life balance as well). And you might say, "well - you'll never become a billionaire working for someone else". That's not true. There's plenty of CEOs (non-founders) who are billionaires. And the chances of you running your own company and becoming a billionaire, is about the same probability as you becomi…

While true, I'd suggest if someone's career choices are primarily motivated by a desire to become a billionaire, they are not making rational career choices anyway and are likely to be unswayed by, you know, evidence.

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

#382

Post by y-c-o-m-b »

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 think this works out well for most people anymore. I mean that was true a few years ago when things were booming even, but now you're almost guaranteed to have a very hard time. I know someone that is over-employed and has over half a dozen jobs (yes you read that right, and it's been verified); most of them are at entrepreneur owned companies and they are all struggling right now, hanging by a thread with a skeleton crew.

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

#383

Post by [deleted] »

nottorp wrote: post #112
aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Basically a modern form of company town? 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.

[deleted]

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

#384

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

wepple wrote: post #287
stonethrowaway wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Believe it or not you get over this. It’s kind of like the fear of going up on stage to give a presentation. Some people get an addictive rush, these are usually serial entrepreneurs who just love to be in charge because they have no problems with risk/stress tolerance (mo…

> Everyone should attempt to start a small business or a side consulting gig. Failing that, you should strive to make it to VP-suite Utter horse shit. I want to earn enough to live without too many worries, and spend time with friends and family. Being able to leave at 5 is irreplaceable

As an entrepreneur, you can leave anytime you want, but of course, you can't leave the responsibility aside.

With an employer not offering remote, you can set your own rules around it. You can work from Bali, if you want and your customers are OK with it. But i agree , the small business route is certainly not for everyone.

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

#385

Post by wnolens »

RandomCitizen12 wrote: post #220
wnolens wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interviewed and was given a "huge" offer from them. 50-70% of the comp is non-liquid equity at the valuation of their choosing (ok, technically a 'third party' decides this, but I call partial shenanigans and it fluctuates wildly anyway such that a ton of their employees hired a few years ago at a ridiculous valuation are getting shafted - check blind)

It looks like they will IPO at some point, so that valuation issue should go away.

I look forward to watching the chips fall. I accepted an offer elsewhere for less money on paper and more in my bank account and I think I made a great decision. Not to mention the Stubhub culture, which upon interviewing them, I felt was toxic.

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

#386

Post by racional »

stonethrowaway wrote: post #277
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…

> 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. Believe it or not you get over this. It’s kind of like the fear of going up on stage to give a presentation. Some people get an addictive rush, these are usually serial entrepreneurs who just love to be in charge because they have no problems with risk/stress tolerance (mo…

Believe it or not you get over this.

You can get over it if you dig the day-to-day of running a business. But not everyone digs it.

Everyone should attempt to start a small business or a side consulting gig.

No they shouldn't because as an endeavor it just doesn't appeal to lots of people.

The "everyone should try and become good at the stuff I think is fun" tone of this response is just weird, and grossly out of touch with observations of human nature.

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

#387

Post by ecshafer »

kayge wrote: post #311
zxexz wrote: post #88

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…

As a 30-something "full stack web developer" who has also spent the last 3-4 years learning about IBM i (aka AS/400) servers and the CL and RPG programming languages... I have a glimmer of hope that I might move into a gig like that in my twilight years of employment :)

I highly doubt that those gigs will exist in the future, or will become even rare than they are. The big banks and financial companies are making a decent effort to get rid of those legacy systems (but are on decade + time scales). They also are weary to even hire new people in those stacks, and are increasingly relying on contractors through places like TCS that will put people through bootcamps. I know several places that have the policy of no new cobol code, only maintenance. These people with the ludicrous salaries, I assume are consultants, or have even more niche specific and rare skills beyond just COBOL and JCL and RPG or whatever, probably with specific, ancient implementations on ancient machines.

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

#388

Post by rqtwteye »

chaostheory wrote: post #168
rqtwteye wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard/read of these people but people I know who work at hospitals doing MUMPS get paid very little. Same for COBOL programmers. There are some mythical people who make bank but most COBOL guys make way less than the typical JS guy.

Are they the original employees who started decades ago? If so, that’s no surprise. My aunt was in the same position years ago, despite my attempts to update her on modern salaries. Those awesome salaries tend to be paid to mercenaries and not the lifers.

And only to a very small subset of the mercenaries. Most institutions that hire COBOL or MUMPS people can't fathom paying a lowly "IT" guy that much money. They prefer to hire some cheap offshore guys.

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

#389

Post by chollida1 »

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.

> 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.

I'd disagree about your perceived upbringing mattering at all.

I don't know of any fund that hires technical staff like that. I mean we're here to make money, if someone can do that, no one cares what their social upbringing is, I mean like at all.

Now the school you went to matters, though it matters about as much as it would at a FAANG company.

And as to "how you present yourself, whether they want to work with you, how trustworthy you are, "

I would hope that all companies hire based on how someone presents themselves and would we want to work with them. Everyone should base hiring on how the candidate acts and presents themselves, that seems like an incredibly positive step, no?

> The technical pieces are pretty far behind.

Which specific fund are you referring to here. This seems very uninformed from my experience, but i'm willing to look at your evidence that hedge funds don't really value technical ability.

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

#390

Post by FireBeyond »

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…

Similar. Tier 2, maybe, you've heard of them but definitely not in the FAANG range. They are public and about $8B revenue.

Staff PM, around $250k base, 20% bonus, and $150k RSUs per year so pretty much on the money with yours, $450k TC.

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