Ask HN: Is there a better employment route to high earnings than FAANG? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is there a better employment route to high earnings than FAANG?

84 pointsjapanaway82 comments

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

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Not on a salaried basis.

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.

It feels dreary because you feel you have nothing left to strive for because you're only measuring your progress by your salary. Find another way to feel accomplished. 350k total comp is enormous and I don't know how you could expect to be even that valuable let alone more valuable to an enterprise (unless you're exceptional, in which case you would not be asking this question).

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.

> I don't know how you could expect to be even that valuable

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.

Is it possible that those ~5 lines of code where introduced by your predecessor who had a similar salary?

No, they were introduced by the founder, and were getting the job done, just not anywhere near as efficiently.

You should do a blog post about this.

thing kind of result may not necessarily be from doing anything particularly exotic, it may be largely a consequence of finding a situation where there's enough scale or leverage in making an change to a key component or bottleneck, finding something that is being done in a silly way, and improving it.

> It feels dreary because you feel you have nothing left to strive for because you're only measuring your progress by your salary

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

Do you mean "not the best choice" in that even if you do come out ahead with $1 mil+ net worth, if you ended up using your time just doing it to make money, you will regret that?

> I don't know how you could expect to be even that valuable let alone more valuable to an enterprise

If your company is profitable, they can afford to pay you more, meaning no matter how much you're paid, you're undervalued.

I've said this before too but it's not true because not all profits should always be paid out to stakeholders if the company is to survive longer-term. Even if it were true op isn't asking about increased earnings in his current role but in the broader labor market and, as someone else notes, op is at the tail of that distribution.

I don't disagree :) I'm just trying to push back on the narrative that there's a cap on how much value an individual can bring to a profitable company.

Is it OK if I judge him? God, what do people do all these days with all this money?

You can go significantly higher than this, for example:

- 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.

That's a great return on your portfolio. Can you tell us more about how do you invest? Have you hired some fund managers or invest by yourself? What are your suggestions for investing aggressively as the '20s something FANG employee starting at L3?

All by myself, my portfolio is a standard combination of VTI, VXUS, BND. It won't always be as good as this year (yearly return ~15%), but achieving an IRR of ~8% throughout my life would be amazing.

What would you generally consider senior SWE work in this case?

Standard project development and bug fixing without requiring an excessive amount of mentoring?

You are pretty much at the peak of income for your current amount of effort and risk for any role in the global economy. There are higher paying positions but you'll have to risk a lot and work a lot harder.

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.

Money is great at measuring things measured in money. If you want more of it, go searching where people measure everything in money: finance.

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?

Outside of a FAANG I doubt it. Maybe something stock trading related. Considering the income for most software engineers is very far from 350K even if that is the limit for how much you can make you are still doing a lot better than most ever will.

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?

I would tough it out for a few years. Put $2mm in S&P, then plan on a withdrawal rate of 3.5% a year. That would give you a very safe practically permanent salary of $70k which goes a long way in the Midwest or over seas.

Define "few years". If we put some numbers and suppose after taxes and not living in their car or on the street, OP is able to save $150k a year. That would take just over 13 years to accumulate the $2M. A bit less if 7% annual total market returns continue. $70k is a modest investment income, definitely won't provide the lifestyle OP was enjoying during the accumulation phase.

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.

Yes - and $2 million is still a long way from the $10 million needed if you want to be a part of the 1%. Even if you're a top performer in the rat-race, you're still a rat.

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.

>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.

What are you talking about? If the OP did this, he would be a multi-millionaire before 40. That seems pretty wealthy to me.

What do you mean lowest echelons of wealth and lifestyle?

You could start buying income producing assets.

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.

Probably not, but honestly I'd try helping with an early startup that is trying to solve problems that truly matter e.g. immunotherapies. You may be rewarded well in case the company grows and you are an early employee. And it will bring a lot of satisfaction. Maybe you can do this during a FAANG sabatical, to hedge your options.

Where do you find start ups like that?

In biotech hubs. I guess mainly SF, Boston, Oxbridge and Switzerland. But also other places. Biotech is a bit less concentrated.

I'm planning to start up my own one almost immediately.

You have a problem that you will never be able to resolve, even if you are making $1m per year. Learn to be satisfied with what you have.

Sheesh, I'm making 18k$ a year after taxes, after 6 years at the current company. Basically, you'ved earned in one year what I would earn in half of my career.

I know this is off topic, but Heart Surgeons barely make what this person is making [0]. Honestly, this person comes off as very greedy.

[0] https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Cardiac_Surgeon/Sal...

When someone measures their success by the growth of their income they are greedy by definition. Even if they have a trillion dollars they will never be happy.

Good point, thank you.

18k$ a year which means you are not working in the US or some other developed country so I am not sure what is the point of that comparison.

You know the median American makes $30k per year? Bottom 25% of Americans make under $18k per year.

These numbers are pretty similar in NYC as compared to the country as a whole, too.

Shouldn't you be looking at the median for software devs?

The $18k salary was never specified to be an engineer salary. There are a wide range of users on this site.

Eastern Europe (EU). Yes, the cost of living is a lot higher in the US, but it's not 20×. Even if we compare it to any western euro country, we'll see that none of them have wages even close to US.

> we'll see that none of them have wages even close to US.

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.

Finance pays more, is also more competitive.

Software engineering in finance, you mean? How specialized is this?

350k is probably doable but if you wanna make like high six figures/7 figures you need to know about finance. You need to learn ML, fundamental analysis of companies, distributed systems, NLP, data analysis on data sets with extreme bias, holes, messy, etc. Could go the c++ low latency route, idk how well those are paying these days

It's a big field - I'd say buyside algo funds pay best in the space; I expect you'd be able to increase your income if you find the right fund and the right position.

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.

> the closer you are to the profit centres, the more you get paid

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.

This is outdated. Top non quant funds still pay their programmers 400 - 700k. Places like bridgewater, pimco, etc.

Yes, but the harsh truth is, you are still a 'second class citizen', even if a well paid one.

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.

So what, if youre paying me 600k a year to write code, I'll accept some abuse. Its why they pay so much

The comp structure is very different though. Base salary in finance is low compared to tech/silicon valley. most of the typical finance comp comes from yearly bonus, usually cash, but sometimes stock/options with vesting.

> You want to do engineering in a trading role: designing prop trading strategies, managing portfolios and pnl.

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.

That's true, but "IT" can still be paid pretty well. It's sort of like being a SRE at a FAANG. They won't respect you, but they need you anyway. Someone has to clean up the messes devs make. :-)

> They won't respect you, but they need you anyway

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.

I haven't. YMMV, and I'm glad to hear it's working well for you.

What's the culture like at these places if you're an engineer? Does the finance bro culture bleed over, or is it separate?

Depends on the fund - most specialist algo funds don't really have a 'trader bro' culture - no loud trading floor, no brash yelling on the phone.

The vibe is more of a tech firm with people working quietly in front of their copmputer.

Once you're seasoned enough on the finance side you'll wish you went to silicon valley...

The grass is always greener.

Assuming that financial growth is your main motivation, here are few more examples:

- 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.

I think this thread gives you some great answers. I'd only add to think about exactly what you want from that extra money since there are ways to optimise your life for enjoyment without it. I'm older than you and I don't earn anything near what you do and probably never will but I work for myself, pick my projects, tech stack and hours and generally work around 20 - 30 hours per week. I fill the rest of my time with personal projects, hobbies, friends and family and live in a pretty affordable place.

If you are struggling with your bills, you could consider talking to your financial institution or ask some fellow HNers to help.

Why exactly do you need more money?

Op doesn’t seem to have an issue with paying the bills, it looks like he wants more to have something to look for? That’s a dangerously frustrating way of thinking imo as you’ll never be happy or satisfied

There is no commonly known route. There are a lot of niche spots you could fill, but few places where an SDE will make more as an employee.

Build your own product. Start your own company. Take it public or sell it. That's really the only way to make significantly more dough than you already are. It carries risk - but at your age, with the money you've been earning, you should be able to weather a storm or two. Good luck!

PS: Just saw you do not want to "start your own company". Building product and selling it doesn't necessarily require starting a "company' per se (in the traditional sense). If you're a creative software developer, and you're young, taking some risk to create a product will motivate you - and can end up making a lot of $dough$-re-mi. ;-)

If you are very good (top 1% of employees), the max comp even for individual contributors is far higher than 350k/yr.

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.

I'm probably pointing out the obvious, but if you're not able to find higher earnings, there's always trying to achieve goals and find fulfillment in other parts of your life, e.g. home improvement, investing, family, etc.

Yes. My income is comparable and I work at a private company. Full cash comp. Salaries are generally high but I took a few risks and my earnings have compounded based on that. I’m currently a IC but on track for leadership.

A lot of it is politics.

Learn APL well. Apply to jobs in finance or heavy industry. That's second-hand advice, but apparently those guys can pretty much set their price.

Wait are finance companies actually using real APL? Like not J or some derivative, but actual, mathematical symbols APL?

Dyalog APL

Request 'vacation raise' instead of pay

I call BS. FAANG fantasy porn.

I'm not at a FAANG and am doing $340k in south bay, all cash, before things like medical / 401k. I'd say the salary is realistic. Throwaway account, don't want anyone to know how much I make.

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.

Ex-employee of mine who is a star. They are not paying him enough if you are telling the truth. Thanks. I'm out and I'll send them a link to here.

Please do - achieving this definitely possible. See my other response in the thread on how I think I'm being valued.

What do you do and why are you sufficiently good at it?

You don't need to be good, you just need to be at one of the high paying companies. FAANG and some startups will pay these salaries across the board. Some lesser paying companies will compete on occasion but generally there's a big gap between top paying and not.

I have not found a startup that would be willing to pay that much plus equity, or even paying that without it.

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.)

I hate to say this, but I do "everything" (exclusions apply - I am not a data scientist, nor would I know what's involved until I get involved). I am not going to say I am a master of x thing, but it is enough for the purpose of scaling, proper architecture / code quality / etc.

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.

Thanks for answering. I think these are qualities that I'd probably share, and while I am in Canada with less than ideal salaries comparatively, I'll hold out hope that I can find myself in a similar position and one that I excel in. :)

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?

Yes. I always bring it up with my boss if that becomes an issue. Sometimes just taking vacation helps. Good bosses will make sure I'm not bored when I bring it up (eg find a project I'd be interested in, or not have to work with certain teams / people I do not enjoy working with), or will fight for comp increases if that is an issue.

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.

Go to a cost of living calculator and see how much money 350k is in SF compared to other cities. You'll be surprised. I'm not even making 200k a year and I wouldn't move there for less than 350k.

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