Plus FAANG is like grad school for startups. Startups love their CTOs and tech leads to be ex-FAANG. Looks great on the "who we are" pages and slides. You're way more likely to be able to land a top-level position at an early, promising startup with that in your work history. I suspect lots of them round-file any applications that don't have either FAANG or something really remarkable and relevant (say, published research in the same area the startup's working on) as their first filtering pass. They need someone with a history they can sell to investors and early clients.
Right, so you've made a bunch of money, and can now be a little more picky. I never implied that you were necessarily a millionaire, but it does seem like there's a good chance of it.
I ain't sitting in front of my computer because I love it, I do it because I need money.
I haven't made a bunch of money. I never worked for a company earning FANG style income. Outside of America companies don't pay stupidly high salaries like silicon valley.
If ~12k in savings is close to being a millionaire then I'm rolling in it. But I guess I don't need to live a lavious life style.
I just wouldn't accept 250k at a FANG company where I'm a number and hating my job and not having any say or impact. Working for a smaller company and having a life after work with no stress is better.
Do you have any assets along with that 12k, or does that 12k just go quite a lot farther wherever you are? 12k renting in Canada would last me a few months, spending frugally and splitting rent. Once that's gone, I'd have no assets, no investments, just homelessness looming on the horizon. So it would provide a bit of runway, and I'd choose whichever of a set of offers if I received them, but it's very rarely the case that there's even one option. If you've put money into a mortgage over that time, or an investment account, or your cost of living is extremely low while your prospects are good, then sure it's just a low risk lifestyle choice I'd also favour. If you can't whether a bad storm though, you don't want to be caught outside during it. Every time I'm in that position, I take the first month or two and try to find something I really enjoy. But that never goes well, and I'd sure as shit hedge my bets and take the job at FAANG if it came about, especially if it's the only choice available.
No, just spent disposable income traveling as I spent 10 years living in Singapore. But met wife while traveling and now living in Taiwan trying to save money.
FAANG is "growth & engagement", not much better though. At least crypto is easy to ignore, while "engagement" relies on it getting in your way and being hard/impossible to ignore.
Eh, a lot of the work at a FAANG, or a GAMMA, or whatever acronym you want to use for "big stable tech companies", is on products that people use and like and the changes you make matter to people. You may be a cog in a machine, but it's an important machine.
I'm actively resisting any future incorporation of Google related anything into my life. Doubly so for Facebook and it's evil tendrils. Twitter/LinkedIn and all that other junk don't even deserve consideration.
Are you so sure that work is really important? Most of that big tech stuff is some variation of a low quality attention sink, or similarly some kind of ad-tech that mines the personal information that gets used in said attention sink. [There is real stuff being worked on, but it's not the core focus]
I've worked a couple jobs that have had tangible real-world impact, and that has counted for a ton: keeping search and rescue helicopters in the air, and improving material science. Besides that, I think back to what I've contributed to, and it doesn't amount to much.
At this stage, I'm fairly selfish about work stuff: I need to learn and to get paid. If my work can have meaningful impact that's awesome, but very elusive.
Like, I understand your position, but the way everyone goes about "de-Googling" or avoiding other big tech products makes it very clear it is useful and important.
Everyone always writes their blog posts about how to switch to alternate services for everything company X does, instead of writing letters to the editor about how notebooks and typewriters, paper letters and day planners, physical photos and public radio, printed maps and encyclopedias are all you need.
Online maps, internet search, email, word processing, spreadsheets, mobile and desktop operating systems, compilers and IDEs, music and video streaming, cloud file and photo storage... people use them. You can have your problems with the way the business is run and the fraction of the internet that is ad supported, but it doesn't change that it feels good to work on a thing that millions of people will use and get value out of and maybe even like.
Harder to brag about working in big tech given increasing contempt for these companies but yeah maybe the implication still is that you're loaded and comfy if that's something worth bragging about
People hate the companies but no one denies their tech acheivements. A manager may not brag but tech person certainly can...if they acheived things there.
My observation is that people “like” what’s familiar. If they try something new they may not like it, and consider the experience a waste when they could have had something they know they like.
Some people go on cruises every year or get a timeshare, others throw a dart at a world map.
