My advice for this poor kid is to look around at startups and do more networking. FAANG jobs aren't anything to aspire to anymore.
- Comp: Total comp for a new hire with 3+ yrs dev experience is probably 300k -> 400k at a FAANG on average (with possibility to be higher). If you want to live and raise a family in your own house in the bay area (2.5 Million for a reasonable house), this matters.
- Access: Few places have the kind of scale and resources of these companies, that can make them fun places to work. You also get to learn a lot from really good coworkers (and go to talks, explore different things, etc.)
- Work/Life: FAANGs are generally pretty good for work/life balance (though this can vary by team and manager). They're generally pleasant places to work as an engineer.
San Jose’s median house price is $1.2 million. A million will get you a quality ranch.
(I fully appreciate the ridiculousness of presenting a million as “affordable”)
You can find a cheap house for $1.25M in San Mateo or on the outskirts of San Jose, but it’ll still be pretty small and far away.
I love the bay area, and I have terrible judgement, but even my terrible judgement and my love of the bay area combined aren't a bad enough combination to make me think it's a good place to raise a family.
Granted, the cost of living is significantly lower in most cities here than it is in the bay area, but still it just feels... weird.
Edit: Fixed a typo.
At least in the UK this seems like a cultural thing where management is high status/high value and engineers are low status/low value.
I think the US generally gets this right (at least in silicon valley), but it could partly be because the US has some extremely valuable software companies that operate on a global stage that aren't really present elsewhere.
Really great software engineers can generate insane value at a great company with a good business.
It's just stupid nonsense like "writing spreadsheets for the local government" and minor web development. In tech, it really is US vs. ROW
But let's assume for a second that the only relevant companies are US-based. A lot of them also hire in other countries and it is my understanding that compensation isn't what it is in the US either.
I’m not 100% sure - I have less insight into this.
American companies also have offices all over the world. For example, Google have several offices in Africa. This does however not mean that Ghana has a booming tech industry, it just means that sometimes you need domestic offices for minor regulatory reasons.
DeepMind was also founded in the UK and later bought by Google. Their HQ remains in London.
DeepL, who are providing a much better translation product than Google or Microsoft by many accounts, are a German company.
Spotify, which I'm sure needs no explanation, is a Swedish company.
While it is certainly true that the US pays better, I think you need to re-evaluate your position that noone else is creating good or valuable products.
Plenty of tech companies in Europe either way; you just don't know about them. Do you think Europe is some poor underdeveloped continent with uneducated people who can only "write spreadsheets?" What a patronizing comment.
Europe has some companies with IT departments, some American companies with European offices, and some no-name consultancies (which are often US-owned). The indigenous European tech industry is a complete joke, since there is hardly any of it.
A normal programmer in Europe earns maybe $2-4k per month, or $24-48k per year. For context, the American poverty line for a family of four is $24.3k, so they are earning about $21/month above the poverty line.
A normal programmer in the USA earns maybe $100k per year, and up to $300-400k if they work at a big company. In Europe, the CEO of an ostensibly big company might earn $300-400k. It's an utter joke.
That I haven't heard of the alleged European tech companies just goes to show my point. DeepL, what the hell is that? Spotify is somewhat larger-scale web development, but still just a Mickey Mouse startup. The NYSE couldn't even get their flag right! The other two (relatively serious companies) are located in the UK, which is slated to leave the European Union soon.
Is this because of some perceived notion of cultural differences? Because if we're starting to draw lines based on that we probably need to divide mainland Europe into a bunch of separate parts as well.
In my experience, this is mostly done in sentences like "In Europe something or another is allowed/forbidden/... (by law)", but I can definitely see where you're coming from.
I worked at the N in FAANG. It was the best large company work environment I ever worked in. The people I worked with were top notch, I looked forward to going into to work.
Our mission was to deliver entertainment around the world. I believed in that mission. I think entertainment is an important part of people on this planet relaxing, which leads to them being happier and all the outcomes that come from that.
I'll admit Netflix is different than most of the rest in that it isn't driven by ad revenue and increased consumerism, so maybe that made it easier to love the mission.
But yeah, I definitely enjoyed working there. Even without the crazy paycheck (although that admittedly helped a lot).
To answer the follow up question -- the Netflix originals have DRM because they aren't made by Netflix, they are still made by regular Hollywood studios that demand DRM. And for the few where Netflix has control, it's easier technology-wise to just put DRM on everything instead of littering the code with exceptions for some content.
At the end of the day, DRM for rented content isn't so bad. You're renting it. You shouldn't have control over it.
I still don't like DRM on content I'm buying.
Also, their subscription model is quite different from plain rentals, and I'm having issues with the renting model anyway... and Netflix isn't so much renting as subscription... and even people that don't follow these issues are starting to realize that a system where there's no "standard" and you have to subscribe to multiple subscription platforms is bad !
Finding my 2nd job is just as hard as getting the first one, as the product I helped develop is just not that interesting. It would be so much easier to just say I worked at Google, Airbnb, Apple, whatever. I'd be upset, but I don't want to work for a FAANG regardless.
Good luck!