[throwarayes]

If you get a FAANG job you need to think like a professional athlete. Save most of what you make. Assume it’s not going to last.

Do NOT have an expectation that this is “normal” income. You’ll probably end up destroying your integrity or doing tons of BS work just to do anything to maintain that level of income.

Expect the norm to be a startup, non tech company, or some other non FAANG big tech corp.

[hintymad]

> If you get a FAANG job you need to think like a professional athlete. S

This is what Netflix has always been advocating for. Reid Hoffman also wrote the book The Alliance, in which he argues that employees and employers are allies. When they are aligned, they work together. When not, they part ways.

I find that these two views are realistic and we can use them to guide our actions.

[javawizard]

> This is what Netflix has always been advocating for. Reid Hoffman also wrote the book The Alliance

I think you might have Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) mixed up with Reed Hastings (founder of Netflix). :)

[criddell]

I just realized that Netflix’s Reed Hastings is the same Reed Hastings that wrote Purify - the excellent memory leak tool that was a pretty big deal back in the 90’s.

[hintymad]

My bad. I was talking about both. The Netflix culture, and the book written by Hoffman. Hopefully I spelled their names right.

[javawizard]

Oh! You did. I just saw the two in adjacent sentences and assumed you were referring to the Netflix CEO and had mixed up his name.

Nothing to see here, move along...

[lumost]

I don't think this is really true, there are plenty of engineers/managers who rotate through major tech companies. Many Meta folks will head off to new companies which would pay at similar levels.

[menloshark]

> or some other non FAANG big tech corp.

The acronym is outdated. I don't really see a difference between FAANG or Nvidia/Stripe/Uber/etc in terms of brand recognition.

And also it depends on where you land org-wise. What you actually are working on is more important than the brand name

[cvak]

I have a friend that did that, in a 4y stint there, and was happy to get to one of the layoffs phase. He was fairly lucky with the stock price RSUs vs stock price(though he knew a few that were so lucky that their 100k RSUs grant at sign got to like 800k, not that lucky, but yeah, his 4 years of flying to office made him basically "I can retire whenever I please to".

Most of developers don't understand what opportunity they got into to be highly paid eng with RSUs. My friend is managing 500 people in a factory and gets salary that everyone would laugh at here...

[closeparen]

In other words, do not buy a house or start a family within 2 hours of any of their supported work locations.

[gwbas1c]

You can sell your house and roll the equity over to another one in a cheaper area. Depending on how you do it, you might even move into one with no loan or a tiny loan.

[closeparen]

If you personally are being rotated out of FAANG, sure. If FAANG isn't hiring, good luck.

[compiler-guy]

This really isn't true. I'm nothing special and have survived in the FAANG world for going on two decades. Excepting the very new in their careers, nearly everyone on my team has managed good length careers at the various FANNGS, possibly with stops at smaller companies.

It was the startups prior to those that were terribly unstable and where you couldn't be sure your badge would open the door when you came to work.

Meta may be a dumpster fire today, and the others have had bad layoffs, true. But they all have huge headcounts, and median employee tenure that is above average in the industry.

Of course, saving for catastrophe is wise, especially in these times, but that's true no matter if you work for a FAANG or a startup.

[VirusNewbie]

Pretty sure you can look at the median tenure and it's not long at most FAANGs. Most people who work there do not make it long. There are plenty who are there that do, but that's survivorship bias.

[lokar]

Someone from Google can quickly enlighten us. Look up the current tenure to be at 50% in percent, for Eng.

I think it was about 2 years 10ish years ago, but that was during rapid growth. Now that overall growth is down it is useful for this.

[menloshark]

> median employee tenure

it's less than two years, probably well below average. maybe it was more previously