I moved from one of these FAANG companies to another company known for its Culture and work life balance. Since 2023, things have turned very sour and the culture nor Wlb both don't exist anymore and the paycut isn't worth it without those. I'd rather chose the devil I know then the one I don't in your case. My advice to you is to keep searching for your paradise (Large company but slow growth with research division / small company but heavily technical), but be aware that you may never do (without a paycut) and if you do things can change quickly and you'll have to adapt.
Ask HN: How to Exit FAANG?
51–60 of 97 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to Exit FAANG?
#52I'll throw it out there: You sound stressed and burned out.
... Please talk to someone and get some help.
Re: Ask HN: How to Exit FAANG?
#53> I like being an IC and building what I'm told to build; I have no idea how to decide what it is we should be building and don't want to deal with customer demands.
To be honest I'm kind of surprised programmers like this work at frugal
Re: Ask HN: How to Exit FAANG?
#54It's easy, but before you leave, remember: there are very few things in life that matter less than adtech. You will find no shortage of stress and pressure in any field, including ones that pay much less. 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 i…
Its rare to get walked out, even if going to a competitor.
And unless the OP was on a performance plan or in a lower bucket of ratings (which doesn't sound like it's the case as they're being asked to become a TL), they would not be counted as "unregretted attrition".
Re: Ask HN: How to Exit FAANG?
#55The thing you want, low stakes low effort programming, doesn’t really exist. The reason Google can survive building everything themselves — and thus giving you and many others endless code to write — is because they have exceptionally deep pockets and army’s of people. Outside of Google-type companies, people write code to serve a direct business need which means the impressive software engineers are not the people w…
I feel like I have a lot of fun programming to solve business problems.
The OP should not underestimate the value of having a voice in the room when business decisions are made. A lot of programmers have to implement systems specified by MBAs they never meet.
I hate meetings and prefer to spend all my time coding, but having a great working relationship with management allows me to steer my projects in a direction where I will enjoy building them.
You are dead right about code quality, nobody in the business world cares.
Re: Ask HN: How to Exit FAANG?
#56Where do you live now? If I had to do this I'd do the following: - Move to 2nd tier, lower cost of living city. My hidden gem: Chicago. Public transit, plenty of housing, culture, arts, #1 food city in the US, international airport with flights everywhere, half the housing cost and 3/4th other expenses as NYC and SF. 2nd option is Philadelphia for the same reasons and proximity to NYC for the weekend trips or to go i…
chicago #1 food city, come on lol
Re: Ask HN: How to Exit FAANG?
#57[dead]
Re: Ask HN: How to Exit FAANG?
#58> I like being an IC and building what I'm told to build; I have no idea how to decide what it is we should be building and don't want to deal with customer demands. To be honest I'm kind of surprised programmers like this work at frugal
Why is that? This seems like the heart of the labor-hoarding criticism of Google: hire a bunch of smart people, then tell them to churn out low-value code for the ads machine while their RSUs vest and refresh.
Re: Ask HN: How to Exit FAANG?
#59I am at a different FAANG. Before striking out to find a new job at a different company, I think you should at least pursue opportunities at different teams inside "frugal :P". There definitely are teams which have less scope and oftentimes more ambitious engineers pass those teams by since they are looking for a promotion.
I would probably start looking at something in IT, infra, or internal tooling. Even something like compilers or whatever where you can more focus on iterating and improving an existing codebase.
Re: Ask HN: How to Exit FAANG?
#60I would recommend you consider a government job, in the public service somewhere.
There you will find many people seriously impressed with what your low-effort output can produce -- and the best part is that if you choose the related field carefully, you might be substantially helping the lives of people in your country or local area.
Be it health, agriculture, utilities, or some other field, there's likely to be heaps of problems that technology and modern computing are yet to touch. However, the caveat is that often these organisations and their systems are resilient to change -- that's my friendly way of saying they won't want to buy you a computer that can run python, and if you produce code they might be a bit scared to put it in 'production' somewhere.
But if you're brave and a little persistent, your changes can have a real positive impact, and you'll not be working anywhere near as hard/stressfully as an area that understands technology.
Generally speaking, there is room for a tonne of flexibility in public service for technical experts, because they are rare and valuable.
Leaving behind FAANG compensation will be much more difficult if you take work at a private firm (especially a profitable one), but working for the public you will know your wages are paid by taxation and the contributions of many hard working people -- I think this might help a lot.