Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?

I just spent five years in a mature startup where I could see a tangible connection with the customers and my impact on thier lives (low fee fintech for unbanked). It was laid back and family like enough to be fun but without the drama of real family. Lots of good times.

Since that ended I landed in a very good job (huge Corp) with rediculous pay but I can't see any connection to any real customer and our projects aren't even mentioned in the business impact. I'm relied on to design and build tech and teams but I am not fulfilled. Same as yourself I guess.

I miss being plugged into the business and seeing my impact on customers lives. There is zero family like atmosphere, no joking around or healthy level of hanging-out at all.

I did sort of the reverse. I went from a very small firm in a somewhat related field to a larger (but not huge at the time) company. On the one hand, there's so much "machinery" in place to help you. On the other, it's big--and things like communication take a lot of repetitive work.

(not an ex-FANG-er)

I've only dealt with medium-low level post FANG people, but none of them expressed major downsides.

There is a certain "flatness" because being senior in a FANG is a unique experience.

One basically went back to schoool: Audits university courses out of interest only. Not a bad "gap year" approach to deciding what you really want to do.

Once maslow is out of the way, "have experiences" is good advice. It's not impossible the voluntarist sector, more than start-up is where your energies can be best applied: Start Ups are drowning in sources of competent FANG aware advice. Charities, help, the NGO sector is not so aware and can use you.

Think about board positions on small local NGO entities.

Think about standing for office in your county.

Think about mentoring people outside your core area.

I’ve worked in both big tech and startups. Startups are nothing like big tech companies. The work and needs of a small company are completely different than somewhere like Google.

And here’s the bad news: going to a small startup or mission-driven company probably won’t make you happy. You often have all of the same problems, with none of the support or validation from a big company.

I’ve hired and worked with many who were in your exact same position. Almost all of them quit after a year or less and went back to big tech.

In my eyes, hiring someone from big tech is risky for this exact reason. It rarely works out, and the guys I’ve worked with end up getting sour when they realize they traded a job with high salary, security and perks for what amounts to at the end of the day another job with lower salary, few perks and no security because they got restless or bored.

Starting up: expect lots of discomfort. There's so much bigCo support you have to re-build and it is hard to hire. It might be better to spend 6mths - 1yr at A/B stage co first then only to the founder stage. Alt, try doing something on the side to begin with. Find a partner in crime.

L7 & single? You can afford to pay the outside co-founder a bay area survivable amount (140-200 varies) and have that person work through some of the early situations and then skip out when things are moving along (eg. think A round). Risk-adjusted & safe but yet keeps a lot of the upside while allowing you to taste what it's actually like.

L8? Risk-reward ratio is skewed towards staying at a FAANG. Find and fund a few projects. See what happens. Get excitement outside of work (take all! possible vacations)

Either way, maybe find some time to talk with a proper counselor/therapist (and not HN...). Doesn't hurt and can help with the disconnected feel.

ps. funding env for form FANG, it's good assuming you are doing something sort of close to what you were responsible for. Don't expect risk-reward to be favorable though..