Ask HN: How to Exit FAANG?

First, make sure you don't have too many personal belongings in the office. There's always a chance they'll walk you out of the building on the spot.

Second, tell your manager that you think it's time for a change in your life, and you plan to move on from the company. Your manager probably has an "unregretted attrition" target, so they're unlikely to object to a 2-week notice period if they aren't spiteful.

You will take a big salary hit - make your peace with not owning a downtown penthouse by age 40 - but you probably have enough of a cushion to spend 6-12 months taking stock of your life and goals.

It's not so bad.

Can you please redo sky.google.com? I want it to have the features of Stellarium Web, with JWST photos, and also include "See a satellite" features.

james.darpinian.com/satellites

This would impress everyone. Good luck on your decision!

- Notorious for it's slow-moving timelines and bog-standard technology needs. Tech is usually "behind the curve", but that's okay! You don't need to be an expert in the latest frameworks here.

- Usually the tech is built around a few core business apps, knowing the gotchas and quirks of these is half the job.

- WLB is great, the industry is full of professionals who "just want to get the job done".

- Great job security. Many types of insurance products are legally required by the government and the industry is fairly recession resilient. Mass layoffs are pretty rare.

- You won't get FAANG level comp, but the major carriers can have competitive pay at upper levels.

- The industry is close knit and domain knowledge is easily transferable. You can find a new job pretty quickly in my experience, often by leveraging your network rather than cold-applyling.

People say it's boring, but I actually find the industry quite dynamic and fun. There are so many types of insurance, it's such an essential and pro-social financial product (risk hedging feels a lot more ethical than lending imo).

However, one important factor is owning a home. Housing in the Bay Area is really expensive, and substandard. Therefore, you are paying out the nose for a substandard product, and will likely never own a place, even with FAANG comp. Contrast this with most other places, where you could own a (much nicer, larger, recently built) place for the same or slightly larger expense. The high house prices also cost pretty much the same or more in property taxes, even compared to low COL areas that typically have higher property tax rates.

This one is difficult to price, because you are raising your living standard by raising your housing standard for almost the same or substantially lower housing expense (it's even better if you rent and save up even more to buy a lower-priced home in the LCOL area).