Ask HN: How to Exit FAANG?
But now I'm struggling to find motivation to do my work. I have absolutely no interest in leading a team, but senior members in my org keep trying to groom me into a TL. I like being an IC and building what I'm told to build; I have no idea how to decide what it is we should be building and don't want to deal with customer demands.
What I feel like I'd really rather do is quit and join a team working on something low stakes. Somewhere where I can put the minimum effort and still impress. I think this would be better for my mental health.
But it's a hard pill to give up the FAANG compensation. Also being stuck in a NIH company has atrophied my "real world" tech stack knowledge, so it's harder to market myself (especially now that the job market is saturated with laid off SWEs).
Any advice for jumping ship from FAANG?
96 comments
[ 0.98 ms ] story [ 254 ms ] threadWhat's NIH?
It's very possible that you'd be perfectly happy on less comp, in a role that's more fulfilling. IME, this is a fact that people realize 4ish years into a high-earning career.
For me, I realized that being happy every day is immeasurably more important to me than making a marginal pre-tax $150k/year, and that the FAANG environments are intentionally designed to be incompatible with what brings me happiness, day-to-day. YMMV.
OP lacks motivation to do anything and wants to do "minimal work", "low stakes" and you are suggesting startups ? They will be found out in no time even if hired. With startups, there is no such thing as "minimal work". If anything, pressure will be more than FAANGs with much less benefits and comp.
I was coming at it more from the angle of Big Co can be pretty de-energizing, whereas at a startup it can be easier to build the energy because there's so much actually impactful stuff to be done, vs. sweating out "impact" for your perf review.
Basically the math works like this, if your cost of living is 200% US average (San Fran, LA, NYC are there or higher) and you move to a 96% US average your salary might drop 50% but you are still making the same amount of money essentially. In reality it might drop 30% so you will be getting a raise.
Then you can do things like own a house for $100k or less.
Now supposing your CoL is halved, your CoL needs to have been $150k+ for this to be worth it. Since you lose $75k in pay, and need to make that up from the CoL difference. If you're single, chances are you weren't spending that much on food and housing, so you actually end up with less money. But if you're supporting a big family, you may well have been spending most of your money on necessities and the CoL reduction is worth it. (At least financially.)
However, one important factor is owning a home. Housing in the Bay Area is really expensive, and substandard. Therefore, you are paying out the nose for a substandard product, and will likely never own a place, even with FAANG comp. Contrast this with most other places, where you could own a (much nicer, larger, recently built) place for the same or slightly larger expense. The high house prices also cost pretty much the same or more in property taxes, even compared to low COL areas that typically have higher property tax rates.
This one is difficult to price, because you are raising your living standard by raising your housing standard for almost the same or substantially lower housing expense (it's even better if you rent and save up even more to buy a lower-priced home in the LCOL area).
Anywhere in the US is very good compensation. London is a different story.
I have 4 kids, in Silicon Valley I would need $1.2M to buy a 4-bedroom house (2018 average). Where I live, I own two 5-bedroom houses for a total of $240K. So now I have secondary income and my taxes are much lower than the $1.2M house taxes. This thing kind of cascades let's say you put $200K down for your $1.2M house, so $1M loan also means your 4% interest will be a lot more money than my 4% interest rate. Your school taxes, and property taxes would be much more $ as well.
All that money has to come from somewhere. Does it mean your 401K % contribution is lower? Does it mean that if you do retire with twice as much money in retirement you will be spending all the profits paying your taxes? Maybe, maybe not.
I think that's kind of impossible to predict clearly what's more beneficial. For me I rather have my houses fully paid by the time I retire, I'm trending to have paid both of them off in about 8-10 years. I'm putting 13% to 401K, 6% in IRA and living a comfortable life. Would I have 4 kids if I living in NYC or the Valley? Definitely not.
I'm not trying to argue that my way is the best way. Just that it's just "a way", an alternative for someone that is tired of working in FAANG and wants something else.
That said, I view money now as a way to buy my own disability accommodations. Not everyone has that need.
1) How much money do you need, on an on-going basis, to maintain your level of comfort/improved health/whatever you’ve been spending the money on? Think of this in terms of annual expenditure. Include all of your livings expenses in this.
1a) What can you do to decrease your annual income needs? This might be something big like relocating away from an HCOL area, removing superfluous spending (i.e., things that aren’t making you happy/healthier/etc.,) or optimizing current spending (do you have a big cable package that you don’t use, do you need a new smartphone every year or could you upgrade every 2 - 3 years, etc.) Take this away from the number is step 1) and you get variable A. Example: 150,000/yr.
2) What do you want to do post-FAANG, if anything, and how much will it pay? This number is B. Example: $75,000/year.
3) What are you current investment assets? This number is C. Example: $1,000,000.
4) How much investment income could they produce? For round number purposes, in the current investment environment, maybe start with a 3% withdrawal rate. This number is D. Example: 3%
150000 - 75000 — (1,000,000 * 3%) = 45,000. 45,000 / 3% = $1,500,000.In this example, you need to save/invest an additional $1.5M for your plan to be realistic, or change your expenses or post-FAANG income to alter the timeline. However long it will take to grow your assets by $1.5M — through additional savings from your FAANG income and returns on existing investments — is how long you need to stick it out at your FAANG job, or an equivalent high-stress/high-pay job — before jumping ship without suffering any loss from the benefit the high income provides.
If one thing was going to get me (and possibly you) to leave, it would be a company of similar standing (how users interact with the product, amount of public users or private clients, type of product) offering the ideal tech stack for me (you).
Good luck though. Very interested in how you proceed if you decide to make a change
PS - sorry not so much advice as a generic "same here"
Outside of Google-type companies, people write code to serve a direct business need which means the impressive software engineers are not the people who write good code but rather the software engineers who can use technology to benefit the business — which sometimes means writing code, but often does not.
If you go to a smaller company, even in a software engineering role, even as an individual contributor, expect to spend a lot less time having fun programming and a lot more time solving business problems.
You can absolutely coast in a low stakes environment at a smaller company, but don’t expect that being able to write Google-quality code will impress anyone. At a pragmatic company, people are more impressed by whatever benefits the bottom line. If you’re not a natural at the business side of things, it’ll be much more challenging to impress at a small company than it would be to impress at Google.
A few months ago I was the engineer supporting a new ask from marketing, after listening to their requests and evaluating what tools we had I wrote exactly 0 lines of code and we launched on time and without issues in part because I figured out how to use the levers we'd build into existing systems to do what they needed. It's engineering work but not development work.
Outside FAANGs there's more focus on contributing to success than simply contributing LOC. (I left where I was in part because I felt I was penalized for finding efficient ways to do things rather than churning out LoC)
The role you are describing might be different to an engineer.
Sure a good engineer avoids unnecessary coding but having done that they have to be seen to do some necessary coding (or necessary work like architecture, security, devops etc.)
Most small companies think in job titles and roles as an anchor but you may wear other hats sure.
The OP should not underestimate the value of having a voice in the room when business decisions are made. A lot of programmers have to implement systems specified by MBAs they never meet.
I hate meetings and prefer to spend all my time coding, but having a great working relationship with management allows me to steer my projects in a direction where I will enjoy building them.
You are dead right about code quality, nobody in the business world cares.
This post by phphphphp nails it so much in every area I've been exposed to, which is most areas of every company I've worked with (mostly as in-house counsel for 14 years), that I just had to chime in with support for the message.
Solving problems is the most valuable skill you can contribute. If you use it, you will be valued.
Get a Corporate job in a big old school industry/traditional company (e.g manufacturing) where you are just a number. Trick is to find a team where work is minimal. FAANG and startups are out
2nd best bet is to find a Mid sized small business where they don't have much IT but just about enough where you could become a key IC doing 9-5 with minimal pressure. Tech is not their main business.
This is your target, if you want to do the minimum and wow people but the "wow" is equally lackluster.
- Notorious for it's slow-moving timelines and bog-standard technology needs. Tech is usually "behind the curve", but that's okay! You don't need to be an expert in the latest frameworks here.
- Usually the tech is built around a few core business apps, knowing the gotchas and quirks of these is half the job.
- WLB is great, the industry is full of professionals who "just want to get the job done".
- Great job security. Many types of insurance products are legally required by the government and the industry is fairly recession resilient. Mass layoffs are pretty rare.
- You won't get FAANG level comp, but the major carriers can have competitive pay at upper levels.
- The industry is close knit and domain knowledge is easily transferable. You can find a new job pretty quickly in my experience, often by leveraging your network rather than cold-applyling.
People say it's boring, but I actually find the industry quite dynamic and fun. There are so many types of insurance, it's such an essential and pro-social financial product (risk hedging feels a lot more ethical than lending imo).
“Frugal” salary band should allow you to still live a comfortable life. Perhaps you will save a bit less. That’s ok, you want to leave anyway and you will earn less in any other place. You will also become ineligible for future promotions. What do you care, you want to leave anyway.
Now use that extra time to find your next thing. Do interviews, or bootstrap your own thing if that’s what motivates you. Be careful with IP and noncompetes.
but seriously if you want to leave FAANG then just leave. there are many things one can do in life and maybe consider software might not be the thing you want to do. like if you didn’t need money and had housing. what would you do?
life is short and i did the sea change now life is so f’ing refreshing. wake up do work on the land. go fishing at night. do some computer stuff to make money but it isn’t my identity anymore.
bush/commune camping with a bunch of hippies i realised that having skills in computers is utterly useless skill in the world vs say knowing how to weld or lead a drum circle. computers are useful for business/making money but like if you wanna be useful in the world… what skills are relevant and in demand? not for money but for trade. go learn that stuff. you may just find your burnout problems magically melt away and a love for computers comes back (or not!)
Sounds like you need to decide what are your priorities first? I.e. choose between money, time, or anything in between (part time, sabbatical, etc). Then, commit and act.
- Move to 2nd tier, lower cost of living city. My hidden gem: Chicago. Public transit, plenty of housing, culture, arts, #1 food city in the US, international airport with flights everywhere, half the housing cost and 3/4th other expenses as NYC and SF. 2nd option is Philadelphia for the same reasons and proximity to NYC for the weekend trips or to go into the office.
- Take a pay cut working at a financial, industrial, retail company as a cog while enjoying a stable 9-5. Lots of options remote and local with the resume you have.
- Work on side projects, hobbies. Decompress.
I wouldn't worry about your skills with "real world" tech stacks. It's straight forward to pick up.
Edit: I know calling one of the largest cities in the US a hidden gem is odd, but tech and Chicago / Philly? Not often considered.
- availability
- quality
- diversity
Others agree:
https://www.bonappetit.com/story/chicago-restaurant-city-of-... (a little bias here’s another one: https://travel.usnews.com/rankings/best-foodie-destinations-...)
You can do a quick search for more recent opinions.
NYC has more top end, famous restaurants. Chicago has more close to top end restaurants that you can easily get a reservation for. Measured by dimensions like # of Michelin stars, Chicago is only behind NYC and SF. It’s ahead LA for example.
Having Japanese and a handful of decent Chinese places != diverse.
I’ve lived in NYC for 10 years. I’ve looked.
Here’s the breakdown of where to go to get authentic, good non-tourist food:
An hour+ to get to different parts of Queens for decent Korean, Chinese, Mexican options.
Three hours to get to Northern VA for Vietnamese food (or 2 for Philly).
1-2 hours to get to New Jersey to get decent Indian food.
Yes, NYC has great sushi that costs 500 per person. Again, that doesn’t make it the #1 food city in America.
That's where I live now, and while I love the ready access to great banh mi, I do have to go to NYC to get a good babka. No place is perfect, I guess
Whenever someone goes on about Manhattan food that isn’t a food truck, i eye-roll. The good stuff is indeed in Queens or even Jersey.
And then:
https://m.en.aruodas.lt/namai-kaune-romainiuose-pakarkles-g-...
I say that because whereas I work where I want, there are a number of folks I interact with who drag themselves to jobs they hate because they "can't" leave the comp. Sometimes they really have ratcheted up their COL quite high, and other times it is just too much of blow to imagine their salary cut in half. I'll share my experience of a series of paycuts for ever more interesting work, and the satisfaction that resulted, but it usually doesn't seem to resonate.
If you want to be a little IC cog in the machine and build what you’re told, stay at big corps.
First, make sure you don't have too many personal belongings in the office. There's always a chance they'll walk you out of the building on the spot.
Second, tell your manager that you think it's time for a change in your life, and you plan to move on from the company. Your manager probably has an "unregretted attrition" target, so they're unlikely to object to a 2-week notice period if they aren't spiteful.
You will take a big salary hit - make your peace with not owning a downtown penthouse by age 40 - but you probably have enough of a cushion to spend 6-12 months taking stock of your life and goals.
It's not so bad.
And unless the OP was on a performance plan or in a lower bucket of ratings (which doesn't sound like it's the case as they're being asked to become a TL), they would not be counted as "unregretted attrition".
I don't understand how it's hard to give up the FAANG compensation. Do you want money for the sake of having more money? Personally, I want money to enable me to do things that I want to do in life, which are the things I listed above. Once I had enough I stopped trying to get more.
Can you please redo sky.google.com? I want it to have the features of Stellarium Web, with JWST photos, and also include "See a satellite" features.
james.darpinian.com/satellites
This would impress everyone. Good luck on your decision!
Have you considered telling this to these "senior members"? I.e "I want to remain an IC. I don't want to be a TL".
I'm assuming OP is L5, which does require "people influencing", although no formal leadership and or TL role is required. You can stay at this level indefinitely.
OP, is your manager ok with your current performance? Is your EM trying to grow you for promo or into the full level reqs? You should seek clarity here and if the former set boundaries/expectations as per the parent comment.
> But now I'm struggling to find motivation to do my work Is this recent? I'm seeing this quite a bit with the current job insecurity and turmoil at the company. As other comments have advocated: therapy and consider extended leave or a team switch. FWIW I don't think lower stakes work is going to fix your motivation, something you care about may.