Ask HN: Is there a better employment route to high earnings than FAANG?
I’m a 20something software engineer on a year sabbatical from a FAANG company and thinking about my employment options. My earnings are relatively high I think (at senior now, ~350k total comp with bonuses and auto-sell RSUs). However, the idea that I’ve already reached the max expected value for the effort I’m willing to expend as an employee in the industry is a little dreary to me (note: I am very lucky and also feel bad about saying that).
Does anyone know of a route to equivalent earnings outside of FAANG? Assuming that I am willing to live anywhere and work on any type of software, but do not want to go into management or start a company.
edit: thank you for the responses
84 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 166 ms ] threadI'm planning to start up my own one almost immediately.
Just for reference here in Canada the average income for sofware developers is around 70k CAD which is maybe 55k USD.
What is it in particular that you find 'dreary' to think you have maxed out your earning potential doing the same type of job you are doing now? Do you enjoy doing what you are doing?
BTW I'm not judging you. I'm just saying I don't know why you would expect that that is not indeed your top earning potential given your skillset.
This.
In your post you mentioned nothing but salary. Sadly I think you might find the hard way that the whole FAANG salary rat-race isn't/wasn't the best choice
I've had roles where I changed ~5 lines of code that resulted in at least my yearly salary worth of reduced operating costs. Programming can be a high-leverage activity, FAANG salaries aren't necessarily irrational.
If your company is profitable, they can afford to pay you more, meaning no matter how much you're paid, you're undervalued.
As everywhere else, the closer you are to the profit centres, the more you get paid: e.g. exchange connectivity specialist at an HFT shop, devops maintaining the plumbing and infra for ML systems, data wrangling specialist etc. Also, some funds are notorious for having made weird decisions regarding their main programming language (e.g. ocaml or q/kdb), so being a language specialist can also prove lucrative.
You can also look to join a trading team inside a fund - the ceiing is much higher on what you can be paid, but it's a lot riskier too. Generally, working on the infra side of a highly sophisticated algo fund is less risky.
Yes, this. I would go further and say that if you're "IT" in a finance firm you're a second class citizen. You want to do engineering in a trading role: designing prop trading strategies, managing portfolios and pnl.
There are very few financial firms that are tech companies at the core. The landscape today is certainly better than it was ten or twenty years ago. Today, the firms who have a standing chance to compete in the arena have automated everything.
I'm making sweeping generalizations, so obviously YMMV.
It's really a matter of culture; virtually all places will have a clear delineation between Investment and Technology, with various perks given to Investment people: better visibility into what is going on, access to higher management, general power to influence which projects need work etc. Also, Investment people tend to hang out together.
EDIT: Just realised you were maybe not commenting on the 'second class citizen' bit. I'll leave my comment here anyway.
From a income maximisation PoV, that's true. However, OP was looking to not increase his risk, so taking PnL risk might not be what he wants.
Wait, what? Have you ever been an SRE at FAANG? I am currently an SRE at Google and I am absolutely well respected by everybody and compensated in the exact same band of my peers SWE at my level (L5 at ~400k TC), and the career growth opportunities are the exact same. In fact, I used to be an SWE and switched to SRE due to the challenges being more vibrant and better aligned to my interests.
All my friends who do SRE work at Facebook have a similar experience.
The vibe is more of a tech firm with people working quietly in front of their copmputer.
The grass is always greener.
These numbers are pretty similar in NYC as compared to the country as a whole, too.
You are comparing apples to oranges here, how many European companies are as profitable as FAANG companies, when a company has more money and shortage of skilled people, salaries will rise to attract the best.
There are other factors like US workers work more and have other expenses since there is no welfare state while Europeans work less and also have a welfare state.
[0] https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Cardiac_Surgeon/Sal...
How much of a life do you have outside of work? What would you spend your time doing if you were independently wealthy? Do you have a family? You are honestly at an income level where you can do nearly anything you want, maybe take some time and figure out what that is.
The games rigged; even a top earner like OP can't break into the lowest echelons of wealth and lifestyle by working for a living.
The only way to be free is to setup something that will cause an exponential growth in wealth. Usually that means starting a business, accumulating assets and then getting acquired.
What are you talking about? If the OP did this, he would be a multi-millionaire before 40. That seems pretty wealthy to me.
These comp values are not an illusion, but you have to be good at what you do I guess, and show the company you're worth that much.
I do not have a college degree, btw.
I would be okay taking a ~40% cut with good equity if I felt the startup / team was extremely solid. I have a friend who did that who made the same as I did. My friend does not regret the decision as the company is doing very well.
(I did not consider joining because of location - north bay vs south.)
Any areas I lack, I am given the time to research into it, provide available options to management, then build it out solo or with a team.
If it's solo, it eventually is handed over to a team once in production or until the next big project comes across my way.
Also, I have spent a lot of time building rapport with important people that it is easy to get things started when multiple teams are involved (eg integration of multiple systems). I guess knowing how to deal with internal politics is another value-add.
Having institutional knowledge - if you were the original designer of a system (or multiple for that matter), you also become more valuable as you know how things work internally.
I have been doing this for more than 15 years.
Most of all, coding is my hobby. I'm extremely passionate about it, and work on projects outside of work (I have a home lab setup that I build things on, for example). I love reading articles on HN, and programming language reddits to discover what's new.
It's useful to know what's out there so when you encounter a problem, you'll have a lightbulb moment and go, "Oh, I remember reading about this.", and start to dive deeper into the subject matter.
Salary progression went like this at various large companies / startups:
- 100k
- 120k
- 140k
- 155k
- 175k
- 200k
- 340k
I have never been at a FAANG company, not a manager, and my time is spent 100% coding (if not on research).
I'm not saying you need to do what I do to command that kind of salary - it will be different for everyone. I'm describing what I think I'm doing to get that amount.
Edit: Followup question, have there been any times where you've been kind of miserable or at a total loss for why or what you're doing outside of your current position? Burnt out or otherwise?
Other times, it's simply no longer fun / I don't feel I'm learning anymore / the level of competition is too strong to advance to another tier, and that's when I leave.
I'm at a point in my life where I have nothing to fear by leaving, so that also gives me a lot of sway as experienced engineers are hard to come by right now.
Why exactly do you need more money?
One path is to migrate your thinking from the terms of labor and income to terms of capital and asset development and accumulation. In software this usually means starting a business (eg SAAS) which becomes an asset by establishing a reliable income stream from a customer base. That income stream asset can be sold, yielding a net capital accumulation of more than 300k per year for the time that was put into it.
This is of course extremely difficult to do, with a very high (99.9+%) failure rate, and success is almost always more dependent on non-technical skill factors.
I would advise instead seeking the path of gratitude, finding the capacity to more deeply appreciate your incredible good fortune, and address your psychic discomfort in the value of your labor by performing work that tangibly helps others less fortunate than you.
Good luck to you.
But given that you're taking a sabbatical and there's slight undertones of an existential/"bullshit jobs" crisis here, perhaps investigate wealth that isn't measured in money. Have you spent time with a really good friend lately? Your family? Have you taken some time to pursue your (non-FAANG-tech) intellectual interests? Or maybe just take some time to disconnect and grow a garden? How's your spiritual energy, be it recharged by God, gods, crystals, or just staring into fractals?
Sounds like you're doing pretty well for yourself. Are you really searching for better employment, or better something else?
It's not uncommon for senior staff engineers to be making 1M/yr all-in. But this is for people leading important efforts, who it would be considered damaging to lose.
A lot of it is politics.
- From your comp I assume you are a L5 at FAANG. Getting to L6 is challenging but not impossible and would put you in the solid ~500k range. From there, you could push into L7+, which would get you close to ~800k+, but that is more rare and reserved for truly brilliant and lucky folks. L6 is definitely achievable though.
- Join a unicorn on a good growth trajectory, enter with a standard ~300k offer, and hope in a couple years you'd get to ~1M thanks to equity appreciation. I know several friends who entered into the right unicorn at the right time and made ~1M+ per year just by doing senior SWE work. It's riskier than the above option, but much less riskier and with better odds than joining an early stage startup, which I wouldn't recommend at all. The key is, when you are interviewing don't ask about what technology or text editor they use, ask to see their growth rate data and make sure you join an already-exploding rocket ship, backed by real numbers. I think there are some good arbitrage opportunities for candidates looking to join a unicorn.
Finally, don't squander your cash flow, live frugally, save aggressively and invest.
I am at a slightly higher but pretty similar compensation, and the game has become growing my investment portfolio. Just this year, my portfolio itself has returned well above 200k, which is the amount that I usually save from my paycheck every year, so I literally had an employee (more senior than me!) working for me this year and making me money :-)
Once (if!) I get to ~4M, I'll quit and chill for a couple years around the world. I'm halfway there.
- Change industries - move into finance, look for small proprietary trading shops. Depending on your skill level, this may (or may not) yield better total compensation levels
- Lower your taxes (may not be possible if you are from the US, but I did not make any assumptions). You can do so by changing countries, changing legal entities
- Lower your cost of living through remote work and geoarbitrage. 350k in NYC may buy you the same life as 200k in West Chicago. Bonus points if you can remote from Asia or South America. Morphing into this arrangement from an on-premises job is easier than looking for remote work right away
- Diversify active income streams - 2 part time jobs might give a better yield than 1 full time. Make sure there is no conflict of interests
All of these will eventually plateau, together with your development skills. At that point, the only way to grow is to diversify into skills that scale better (go into management, go into consulting, start companies, teach courses).
Hope this helps.
You could buy real estate and rent it out.
You could also buy an existing profitable business from a motivated seller (owner is wants to retire or tired of the business). Then you use your tech skills to add value to the business. This is potentially less risky than starting one from scratch but you got to pick a good deal.
Also how are your finances? Credit Score? Any bad dept? do you have an emergency fund? Are you living paycheck to paycheck? If you are planning to do this you should definitely get your finances in order. You cant focus on making more money on a sinking ship.
You are earning a lot than most people. It's completely in your reach to become a multi millionaire if you make the right financial decisions. Go for it and strive for financial independence.
Also how are your expenses? If you are living in silicon valley I imagine that the bills there getting a large chuck of your income plus the taxes in California.