Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 547 posts

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

#451

Post by mciancia »

randomdata wrote: post #445
tiffanyh wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> There's plenty of CEOs (non-founders) who are billionaires. Being a business owner doesn't necessarily mean being the founder. No CEO is becoming a billionaire by collecting a paycheque. They might become a billionaire by accepting the right stock offer in lieu of wages, but that makes them the business owner again.

With that logic, most (every?) SWE working at faang is a business owner since they all get stock options/rsu

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

#452

Post by [deleted] »

mciancia wrote: post #451
randomdata wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's plenty of CEOs (non-founders) who are billionaires. Being a business owner doesn't necessarily mean being the founder. No CEO is becoming a billionaire by collecting a paycheque. They might become a billionaire by accepting the right stock offer in lieu of wages, but that makes them the business owner again.

With that logic, most (every?) SWE working at faang is a business owner since they all get stock options/rsu

[deleted]

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

#453

Post by brotchie »

nicce wrote: post #433
brotchie wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startup guy who’s now at FAANG. I’m technical technical technical (IC track). I love building products. Prototyping to find PMF and then spinning that up into a staffed project, then onto the next new thing. Get to work with excellent SWEs, PMs, PgMs, etc. In startup land I was doing so much, pitches, recruiting, coding, landing page design, dev ops, pretty much the full stack. In FAANG land I can just focus on exist…

> I love building products. Prototyping to find PMF and then spinning that up into a staffed project, then onto the next new thing. How many products you have actually finished and worked on and polished over years if they produced something valuable in the end? That defines the actual realised value of the business. Jumping from one product to another does not mean that all of them were constantly producing revenue…

Hit and miss. It’s pretty equivalent to % of finding product market fit in startup land.

Mostly worked on internal products. One HUGE hit, a few moderate hits, and quite a few failures.

The calculus for projects at a large bigco are different from a startup though.

It’s not necessarily clear bottom line revenue, especially for innovation teams. Crypto, for example, bigco needs at least some folks working on it to build an understanding of the technology, market, pain points. Some of these projects are started with literally no intention of profitability, but as an explicit build-to-learn.

There’s a wide spectrum of SWE interest and capabilities. Some folks love the creativity of greenfield new product exploration. Others love the focus of crafting a perfectly scalable, maintainable system. These are really just points along a product lifecycle.

I understand myself enough and am unapologetic about getting “bored” easily, and need to be constantly working on creative things.

Others at the other end of the spectrum have a visceral reaction to that. They can’t do what I do, and I can’t do what they do.

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

#454

Post by yamazakiwi »

goatking wrote: post #401
anothername12 wrote: post #370

Regular jack off mid western SWE, here. I come to these threads and cry.

Canadian SWE here, who works for half the money that my US colleagues get (same team, same project...): you are not alone.

At least you're a SWE :)

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

#455

Post by randomdata »

mciancia wrote: post #451
randomdata wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's plenty of CEOs (non-founders) who are billionaires. Being a business owner doesn't necessarily mean being the founder. No CEO is becoming a billionaire by collecting a paycheque. They might become a billionaire by accepting the right stock offer in lieu of wages, but that makes them the business owner again.

With that logic, most (every?) SWE working at faang is a business owner since they all get stock options/rsu

Absolutely. FAANG wages are certainly competitive, but not out of line from what you can make in any old Poducksville software company. It is the becoming an owner of FAANG that sets them apart financially.

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

#456

Post by freetinker »

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…

It’s an arbitrary human rule, not fundamental knowledge. Quite understandable how someone may not have the interest or knowledge to know this nuance (perhaps to their own detriment). It’s somewhere along the spectrum of the knowledge of arcane laws, for example. The federal tax code perhaps isn’t ’arcane’ by popular consensus in educated circles, but it’s on the spectrum of arbitrary human knowledge that keeps changing and evolving.

Would you be shocked if a CPA knows more about this than a theoretical physicist?

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

#457

Post by borroka »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #70
ryandrake wrote: post #52

50 comments so far and nobody has named a single company. You might as well not post if you’re just going to be vague and coy. “They exist, trust me bro” and “I work in a medium sized company that does…” are pretty much a zero-value comments. HN should have a higher bar.

I guess people who work at these companies don't really want competition.

I work in a network (like in computer networking, not setting up events) company where I get paid 75% of the FAANG salary for an equivalent role, working one-third of the hours expected from the median FAANG worker. My company has been freezing hiring for the past 3 years. There is no risk of competition.

But why should I risk being identified by mentioning the company's name for no gain other than the fleeting thought of appreciation from a random anonymous HN user?

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

#458

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

698969 wrote: post #290
dvdbloc wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the USA this is not how tax brackets work. You are taxed on your income in each bracket at that rate, not overall

Out of curiosity, since you said "In the USA" specifically, is there any tax regime in these times where tax brackets don't work like this?

I have never heard of one. I believe that in the UK, because of caps on childcare benefits, a wage increase can actually decrease your take-home but generally marginal tax rates operate on marginal income.

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

#459

Post by bnhlth »

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.

I’ll add to that: in many industries/domains the incumbents are benefiting from the status quo and have no interest in upending it, while others have accepted some of these as “hard facts”[0].

I’m working on one such problem in the healthcare space, as an outsider. In early stages, so we’ll see if it goes anywhere.

[0] https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/pmf-framework/

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

#460

Post by wonger_ »

cvwright wrote: post #339
dannyphantom wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Imagine if this app was B2B instead of B2C, or if it pivots to B2B in the future, or if it's acquired. Imagine also future passive income with little maintenance. And his project seemed like a side project written over a few months.

Still risky, but the expected value is comparable to a stint at a salaried job IMO, once you find a decent market opportunity. Not to mention the qualitative value of self-employment, and that FAANG employment seems a tad risky these days with layoffs.

Post reply on HN