Have you considered just getting a second job? You can probably work your FAANG job, then add another one on top. This will be pretty easy to pull off since you're remote.
Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
251–260 of 648 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
> be glad you're not cleaning toilets for 20% of your pay Be advised: If you are programming computers in 2020 and making only 5x what a toilet cleaner makes, you are approximately 100% underpaid.
or maybe programmers are overpaid...
In the U.S., it's much more likely that the custodians/janitors are getting underpaid.
Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
> why would an American company offer to pay me twice as much as I could make in the UK if I'm in the UK? They only have to offer a little bit more to inceltivize me to take the job. If they have the money, e.g. they're a large corp or a startup with VC money to burn, they tend to not watch costs that closely and it should not be a problem. I've received multiple offers for six-figure remote jobs in the US (I'm from…
If I may ask, how did you find those six figure remote jobs?
"Who's hiring" thread, here on HN, with one exception, which was IIRC a direct application to their website (it's a known startup that happened to be open to global remote hiring at the time).
The common denominator of most of these offers was that they were in expensive US cities and wanted to hire "talent", but, in these locations, it would probably cost over $200k (esp. including health insurance, retirement contribitions etc. which I wasn't offered) to have their pick. So they were happy to offer $120k-$130k to a comparable remote candidate. BTW they also employed people from cheaper areas of the US.
Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
You spend around half of your wakeful hours at your job, if it's unfulfilling you're trading misery in addition to time for money.
That's why they pay you money for it. If it was fun, people would do it for free (see the FOSS world and its endless discussions on how to monetize).
My job brings me opportunities of scale that I'm unlikely to find elsewhere, and I genuinely enjoy the challenges, but I'd work on something else if they didn't pay me to do it.
It's not that it's not fun, but fun doesn't pay the bills. If it didn't _have_ to pay the bills, I'd probably still develop software but with a very different focus.
Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#255Let me explain. I was browsing Facebook on my phone at Philz one day and saw Mark Zuckerberg come in wearing a suit (it was a Friday). I asked him "are coding interviews good?". "No", he said, "they're very bad". I would have asked him to explain, but he seemed to be engrossed in the last level of some sort of Mario Bros game. I went back to my phone and clicked on an ad. Only I never click on ads: it was all a dream…
Is this GPT-3 output?
This is now my default response to any nonsense on HN
Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#256Betteridge's Law says no, and so do I. I work at one of these companies. The raw productivity level of the people I work with is as high as at any of the dozen other companies (mostly startups) I've worked at over 30 years. I've been the guy who could get away with really working one day a week (but didn't succumb to the temptation) and I honestly have trouble keeping up with some of my peers now. To be sure, a lot of that "productivity" is bandaging self-inflicted wounds, implementing features that everyone knows will be thrown away within a year, and generally going around in circles. Despite that, there's continual forward progress on par with anywhere else I've been. I've worked with some real superstars in my time, and I've never worked with anyone who could put in 20% effort here without getting managed out the door.
Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#257Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For example in Sweden and most of Europe, most devs only make 2x-3x of what the toilet cleaner makes. Most devs in Europe are massively underpaid, and should work on the internet instead of some local underpaid wage-slave job. There is a shortage of skilled programmers in the world. There’s no reason to remain underpaid other than really, really wanting to work a very specific set of local timezone hours.
Well, I don't actually mind being "underpaid" when I can get home every day at 4pm, have 30 vacation days, ~20 months of sick leave, pay 400€ for my apartment, and have fun at work. And while I might be underpaid compared to SV, I'm still in the top 10% income-wise.
Why not only work only every other day until 4pm, spend more time with your friends/family/books, pay twice as much for a nicer apartment, and save even more each month for a rainy day or retirement?
Being paid properly isn’t about having enough to get by and have fun. It’s about not squandering your most valuable nonrenewable resource: minutes of your life.
Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#259At Apple, the amount of debate, code review delays, and interdepartmental meetings made everything take forever. I once waited 2 months for a code review there. A feature I wrote and pushed for Leopard didn’t actually ship until Lion. Back then there was severe priority inversion, anything the desktop needed got delayed by iOS priorities but also the senior engineers with magic rubber stamp powers were working on iOS…
I don't know if I should feel happy or sad that even the employees are getting the app store review treatment.
Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#260If your FAANG is Amazon, it gets better. When you first join, no one knows what you can do, so you get crap tasks. You show what you can do and you get better tasks. As you stay on a team for a little while, you start to notice small improvements that can be made, so you make a well thought out suggestion (or you just go and make it better). Over time your tasks become projects. You understand the goals for your team…
He's not showing what he can do though. Making changes take a week when he finished them in a day is self-sabotage.