Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

Facet Development is a freelancer network made up exclusively of ex-FAANG engineers. Facet does the work of finding freelancing jobs/projects and then we send them out to devs in the network. We also provide project management and billing/collections, help with taxes, etc, so freelancers get to spend a lot more of their time doing the enjoyable parts of freelancing and not trying to run a small business.

We target FAANG companies and companies that wish they could hire FAANG devs when finding work for our freelancer network. When I was a dev lead at Microsoft, bringing on vendors or outsourcing was a terrible experience, because they always seemed to be below our hiring bar. So I started Facet to solve the problem I had when I was an engineering manager at a FAANG company.

We have more work than we can handle, so if you are a FAANG or ex-FAANG dev that wants to switch to freelancing or already is, you should sign up!

You can read more about the Facet Developer Network here: https://www.facetdev.com/blog/the-facet-developer-network-th...

"Then, it struck me: what if ingredient parsing was the business? If this was a problem for me, then surely other developers struggled with it as well. Hopefully, some of them made money and would give some of said money to me if I solved their problem. Thus, the idea was born for Zestful, my ingredient-parsing service."

Before starting to write a single line of code, you need to do market research and understand the opportunity size. Building a business takes several years of personal investment and you are betting a lot of potential missed opportunity on the "ingredient business" market. This is a common mistake that, again, I have made myself, too.

That's most places, FAANGs notwithstanding. 6 months getting up to speed, realizing what a clusterfuck it is by 12 months, dealing with it to 18 months, and then getting to the I-Want-Out point at 24+ months.

Plus the whole "jump ship every 2-3 years to maximize salary" thing is possible for FAANG-level engineers.

I wouldn't read too much into this. I've worked at tech companies where 4 years of tenure was considered old and non-tech companies where 8 years was considered young.

Anecdotal evidence or course, but IME people with strong skills in the tech industry (even if it's tech marketing or tech HR) have a lot more options to change jobs for salary or experience reasons. If you're ambitious you're going to be even more inclined to move up or move out.