You’re at Google now right? You people think anybody not at Google is an idiot.
The reality is Amazon is extremely competently run given its size. The pace of innovation is astonishing. We might not be ubermensch but we get the job done, and we are trusted by more people in this country than either Google or Facebook are.
Your at Amazon, right? You should be aware that many other Seattleites in tech despise those who are part of FAANG, vast data mining (FANG) & extreme internal secrecy (Apple, Amazon) have created an environment where ethics are ignored, and only bootlickers are promoted.
This has come back to haunt some of these companies already, but fixing the structural rot is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Generally it's FAANG (minus Amazon, plus some unicorns), for the reasons mentioned above: a very good balance of excellent compensation, talented peers to work with, and interesting work.
Joining these companies in the right teams is literally what makes it possible to have an exciting technical career AND the guarantee of being able to retire (or more generally, gain financial freedom) in your early/mid 40s, if one decides to stay on an individual contributor technical track. Seriously, it's the only decision that makes sense if one has the chops to get into one of those places. Always pay yourself first, with interesting works that keeps you marketable and with liquid cash to put into your retirement savings!
I would have jumped ship myself but, as I said in a few other previous comments, I had crazy luck to join a "very mediocre" startup who is growing a lot, so my appreciated equity prevents me from leaving, otherwise I'd for sure be in FB right now, since the offer they extended me was very generous and the specific work was something I wouldn't be able to do anywhere else.
A close friend of mine was hired for their network traffic team a few months ago. I spoke to him recently and he said: "boy, I thought I knew many things about handling large traffic at scale, but the things I'm seeing here are simply unprecedented". So, to all the people who say FB will go down in history for hiring mediocre people, please recognize how ridiculous your statements are.
> Seriously, it's the only decision that makes sense if one has the chops to get into one of those places.
For you, sure.
There are better ways I can think of spending my 20s and 30s than just setting up for retirement in my 40s, because when you're in your 40s, you're not in your 20s or 30s anymore.
I never said "than _just_ setting up for retirement". I am in my early 30s and early retirement has always been a major goal for me (grew up dirt poor and suffered because of it), and yet I don't feel I will ever regret working very hard during this past decade, since it allowed me to accomplish some things I'm pretty proud of:
- It allowed me to immigrate to the US and become a citizen in 8 years, coming from a poor European country, thanks to my engineering background I obtained by getting a BS + MS in computer engineering while other acquaintances were going down an easier path (e.g. "I don't want to waste my early 20s studying").
- It allowed me to live in San Francisco, an absolutely amazing city where I am having the time of my life, cultivating relationships with my diverse group of friends, exploring nature, ...
- It allowed me to work on very interesting projects and technical work.
- It allowed me to travel without worrying about budgeting, I take a month of international travel every year and in between jobs I took a 4 months break to explore more deeply SE Asia.
- All that hard work allowed me to be incredibly well compensated, and in my very early 30s my liquid net worth is in the 7 figures now (started from exactly 0 out of school), which gives me an immense freedom for the rest of my life.
So, I didn't "_just_ set up for retirement", and had I been in FAANG I would have likely done exactly the same (since that's what my friends working there do), just being paid more so right now my net worth would be even higher.
I'll certainly agree to disagree since my statement was perhaps too strong, but I just wanted to bring the perspective that one can work hard with an early retirement goal without giving up on the things that one could "otherwise enjoy" if pursuing a different goal.
Amazon is known to pay less and have a brutal work life balance.
Microsoft is known for paying less and being too big and too political to the point where making an impact is really difficult.
Mind you, this is on average: there are stellar teams at both of those companies that work on incredible stuff, and I would consider an honor and privilege to be in that situation, if the opportunity was given to me. Likewise, there are many teams in Google maintaining internal legacy applications with no challenges to solve, and you would have to pay me 7 figures to force me to work on those.
According to my experience, the average Amazon/Microsoft engineer would jump in a heartbeat to Google/Facebook, given the opportunity and assuming the logistics are feasible. The opposite is much less common. If you download the Blind app and start reading threads, you’ll quickly realize this trend yourself, and it matches what I’ve heard from acquaintances. Based on these observations, yes, I conclude those engineers have less prestige until they stay with those employers (relative obviously, they are still at a top tech company, so probably in the very top percentiles of the market).
Once again, this is on average, it depends on the specific team. There are insanely talented people at both MS and Amazon!
As far as you not getting accepted, not passing an interview there doesn’t mean you are not talented, but passing the interview very likely means you are talented, and for them this high false negative rate is good enough at this time.
I’ve been lucky enough to get offers at Google, Netflix and Facebook and the interviews were definitely hard, I can’t imagine a weak candidate passing those interviews by mistake, but I can very well imagine a smart candidate not passing them. Preparation is key: I played the game for a few months and prepared according to their interview style. It’s tedious and time consuming work.
>> Seriously, it's the only decision that makes sense if one has the chops to get into one of those places.
I don't apparently
> I conclude those engineers have less prestige until they stay with those employers
Well, I appreciate your honesty - when I tell most people about how I make ~$150k at one of those companies they usually claim they don't look down on me when I've always maintained they secretly do. Thanks for clearing it up.
I hope my life isn't forever ruined by my inability to get into FB/G/top startups out of undergrad. I prepared for years but never got past the onsites. Hopefully someday I'll be able to gain the respect of people like you.
??? You seem like you’re trying to find a fight here for reasons I cannot fathom. All I think of you as an employee of one of these companies is that you’re probably less well compensated than you could be.
Anecdotally most of my friends didn't even apply to internships/FT at Uber after their reputation got tarnished. Uber used to be my dream company, but after Fowler and their new grad pay started to go down I never even applied.
>Is it possible that someone smarter than you doesn’t want to work at Facebook?
It's definitely possible, but they'd probably be working at another top tech company or finance company (think Citadel, Google, Jane Street) or starting their own company instead.
Few comments on this because I think about this quite a bit.
1) I always read these articles and sigh. Seems like they only focus on 2 elite tech companies at the expense of all the others while only interviewing students at the #1 CS school in the country. I feel like a 2nd class citizen in the industry because of it. When will the normal people be heard?
2) I'm kind of surprised they listed a $140k starting pay. That's pretty low for new grads in the industry and very low for Facebook.
3) I think it requires an immense amount of privilege to say no to a company for relatively trivial reasons (you're probably not going to be working on product code if you don't want to) that pays as much as Facebook does, especially given the $75k signing bonus on the table for interns. I think any discussion about this on the student level has to start with this. Any comparison to the defense industry is silly because defense pays significantly less than big tech.
140k including equity is not unheard of. 90k-120k base salary plus a few tens of thousands in equity is a typical range for a new grad in SV. Chances are they'll still live with room mates, though because housing costs are high. Not to mention the 10-20k that is paid in California income taxes. So it probably balances out.
Total compensation obviously because FB stock is liquid. New grad salary is in the $110-115k range at FB. I know a few companies that do pay it or more base (2Sigma, Snowflake Computing and Jane Street come to mind).
I had offers for $130k base, $130k base + equity and $130k base + bonus and those were considered to be below average by most of my peers.
This "Valley bubble" probably goes a long way to explain a lot of these attitudes too.
Would the average joe/jane, given the offer of a "low" 140K salary at a FAANG, turn it down on ethical grounds?
I doubt it. The median US household income appears to be about 60K (1), so at 140K you'd be single-handedly over double the median houshold income before taking into consideration any partner's income. Thats a big deal.
This almost flippant attitude to employment and high salaries in silicon valley is somewhat worrying. I feel like people are growing increasingly disconnected from reality of life that the average person on the street has to deal with.
>Would the average joe/jane, given the offer of a "low" 140K salary at a FAANG, turn it down on ethical grounds?
I mean, I'm pretty average but I did that for a tiny bit more money considering equity at a startup. I think it's not an unreasonable assumption to make if your competing offers are similar, which a lot of people in this position do. I don't think there are many people who only get Facebook offers.
The calculus is different for interns though, on account of the massive signing bonus.
Where outside the Valley (and maybe NYC) where new grads are routinely getting total comp packages significantly greater than $140k? All the names you dropped in your other post are top companies that the typical new grad has very little chance of getting in to.
> I think it requires an immense amount of privilege to say no to a company for relatively trivial reasons
I'm reminded of a line in Roger Ebert's review of American Splendor: "We don't fight over trivial things, because nothing worth fighting over is trivial. As Harvey might say, Hey, it's important to me!"
The reality is Amazon is extremely competently run given its size. The pace of innovation is astonishing. We might not be ubermensch but we get the job done, and we are trusted by more people in this country than either Google or Facebook are.