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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?

#511

Post by spicysausage »

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…

These threads always surprise me. I'm a director of software engineering in a medium sized company (~3k employees) not located in a big metro but with plenty of people working from competitive areas (I am in the Seattle area myself). My base is a bit over $200k with a 20% bonus and some stock options. I know I'm on the higher end compared to my peers, and I know what my direct and indirect reports make. My wife works for a huge aerospace company as a senior manager and makes about the same as I do. I have a bunch of other people I know what they make, including a very senior engineer at a FAANG company who with 600k this year (everything included) is the highest compensated person I know personally. It's amazing how people throw around 500K like it's nothing. I'm either doing things very wrong/ am clueless or there's some weird bias for crazily over-compensated people in threads here.

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

#512

Post by hurrrr »

jefozabuss wrote: post #32

Can confirm the 500k+ jobs in HFT/crypto (well the latter might not be a life insurance). I saw a couple of these job postings mostly in the Cyprus/Switzerland area. You could also make these amounts in adult/gambling marketing but that's another can of worms..

can you share some names of these hft/crypto firms?

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

#513

Post by seattle_spring »

riehwvfbk wrote: post #327
wepple wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I don't think there are many places in tech where an employee can leave at 5 and expect to keep their job.

Ironically, it's only junior engineers that haven't learned how to say "no" that I've seen hold this opinion.

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

#514

Post by some_random »

malux85 wrote: post #315
some_random wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can absolutely be forced into working immoral jobs by muh capitalism, but some of you are way too enthusiastic about it. Someone doing blue team work for MGM after getting laid off in 2022 is one thing, a Staff Addiction Engineer looking to try a new industry in 2019 is another completely. Secondly, I agree that we should be hiring good people out of these industries, but there are a lot of people who just are…

> but there are a lot of people who just aren't going to be comfortable with that. Actual LOL - who? I’ve worked at enormous orgs, Google, to medium sized orgs, to startups over my 20 year career, as a senior dev, engineering lead, CTO and now founder, I have hired and mentored hundreds, maybe close to 1000 engineers, hiring managers, project managers, and this has never ever been an issue, in one case we hired 20 en…

I've seen it on HN (phpnode said as much just in this same thread), I've heard people say it in person at meetups and cons, and I've had other interviewers discuss it after interviews. Maybe people aren't willing to discuss concerns like that with you.

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

#515

Post by greenie_beans »

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…

everybody saying this is a bad idea, which gives me hope that it might work out.

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

#516

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

yieldcrv wrote: post #417
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

this line of discussion is amusingly charitable for a person replying to a conversation about earning $150k - $300k/yr they're not eligible for any welfare and are above the best phaseouts

poor things:)

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

#517

Post by ligic25061 »

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…

[dead]

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

#518

Post by wojciii »

riehwvfbk wrote: post #327
wepple wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I don't think there are many places in tech where an employee can leave at 5 and expect to keep their job.

Most of people I know work 37 hour weeks and use sone kind of flex system where hours above 37 per week are saved and spent at later time. The only person keeping track of your time is yourself.

Isn't socialism great?

I don't work for free and neither should you.

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

#519

Post by avn2109 »

angarg12 wrote: post #379
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-offe…

This is a pro Blind post and I appreciate that you took the time to write it up in such detail :)

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

#520

Post by red-iron-pine »

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…

> but they are not dramatically more than say, a guy running a successful local plumbing business.

I know a guy who ran a successful plumbing business around Northern VA.

Took home around 300k per annum. I used to bang his daughter.

He worked hard, though, and had a couple of other guys working jobs independently under him, on top of his work. He was mostly corporate and construction work, but a couple of those guys under him also did residential, and he mostly supervised.

I'm far less than his TCO but also don't have to get elbow deep in shit and work remotely from my basement. Respect the hustle, but I think I'm winning in terms of work-life balance and QOL.

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