From my experience (only one of the FAANGs, so far)... It seems to me that FAANGs are the new banks. Like, today's equivalent of 40 years ago's bank job (cushy, well-paying soul-draining job).
So far I'm done with FAANGs. I can get a nice salary, albeit lower, elsewere and still live comfortably.
FAANGs are just not worth it anymore in my opinion.
It’s not even that “cushy” anymore. There’s still (at Google) free lunch, but the truly critical (and expensive) stuff such as medical insurance has been enshittified considerably to the point where exchange-bought insurance I had as a business owner was better. They do pay well though, that’s true. Ironically they could probably pay less if they weren’t so dead inside.
I don’t see a path for Waymo either. With crime as high as it has gotten in the likes of SF, LA, Portland, Seattle, NYC, without a dude inside these cars will have a fairly short lifetime. Ads, idk, I haven’t seen them in the last 15 years, and their decision to disable ad blocking in Chrome sounds like desperation to me. Search engine duties are better handled by some company which does not insist on filtering search results for political reasons. What else do they do? Android/App Sore? Ok, I think that has staying power. Google Workspace (or whatever it’s called)? That’s rolled up into Cloud, thanks to it it makes a small profit. So no, I’m not bullish on Google at all. I have sold my entire position.
So far I'm done with FAANGs. I can get a nice salary, albeit lower, elsewere and still live comfortably.
FAANGs are just not worth it anymore in my opinion.