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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know why the article’s author thinks prestige is about anything other than money/power (for the population as a whole).

People would rather work at FAANG than Stripe because FAANG will get you a lot more pay and connections. And people know that, so they will value people from FAANG for it. But it comes from the root fact that FAANG makes a ton of net income per employee, same as some finance/consulting firms, and that net income is more attributable to you specifically, rather than say someone at General Mills.

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I have no idea how Stripe became the low paying non prestigious startup job in this conversation. They are a big prestigious company that pays a ton and is soon to IPO. I actually consider Stripe to be FAANG as far as the original acronym was for stocks but in practice is for “high paying prestigious tech companies.”

A better pick for “non prestigious but good company “ might be Khan Academy, which has an amazing service with great engineers but as far as I know doesn’t make or pay a ton.

The article points out that while Stripe is considered prestigious in the Valley, it is not considered prestigious by the Harvard undergraduates the author spoke to.

Yup, every cs majors I know think super highly of Stripe. I don't know what students the author is talking to.

Khan Academy is sought after in the cs student community as well. although won't be first choice for many.

Why? It’s a payment processor so there is little reason to know of it compared to the other FAANG companies.

Facebook has a quarter of the worlds population active on it.

Google has most of the search and is responsible for Android, which is the most popular mobile OS in the world.

Amazon broad cloud computing mainstream and now controls a huge chunk of the world compute because of it.

Apple effectively defined the smartphone era.

Netflix is like 60% of all of the Internet traffic and made legitimate streaming a thing.

Stripe... is an easier to use PayPal?

You mean like knowledge of Stripe at all? It is popular among highly motivated students.

It is less mainstream so exclusivity increases the demand factor.

Amazon's work culture is not very positively seen. Facebook's product is often seen negatively upon although not that much. Google is seen positively.

Some of it is tied into recruiting as well. Apple has a very opaque intern and new grad recruiting process. Netflix simply doesn't hire SWE interns and newgrads.

For Stripe, Presumed High caliber engineering colleagues (party due to size and growth), especially because there is a lot of hype for Stripe and its documentation and process among tech professionals.

High potential for stocks rising at IPO, like Snowflake (although there seems to a value cap) so kids are not as excited about it as Databricks.

>Yup, every cs majors I know think super highly of Stripe

Also wondering, why?

A 2.6+% merchant fee payment processor?

As a place to work at. Presumed High caliber engineering colleagues (party due to size and growth), especially because there is a lot of hype for Stripe and its documentation and process among tech professionals.

High potential for stocks rising at IPO, like Snowflake (although there seems to a value cap) so kids are not as excited about it as Databricks.

Prestige is definitely not just connected to money/power. I've worked at a scientific institute and worked on satellites. Invariably, this entry on my perceived as prestigious by recruiters, parents, friends, acquaintances et cetera.

that’s not true at all. i’ve worked at fang. google for instance pays a lot less than stripe or pinterest or snapchat etc. people specifically work there for the prestige and not the compensation

> People would rather work at FAANG than Stripe because FAANG will get you a lot more pay and connections

Pshh what? You work at FANG and think this?

I think Stripe is one of the few bad examples they could have picked to compare against FAANG. Among late-stage startups, it seems highly regarded and its employees' options are likely to hold real value in the not-so-distant future.

But generally I think the OP is correct: working for FAANG has made many, many people far more money over the past decade than they would have otherwise made on average in a startup.

I suspect that eventually the tide will turn, as it always does. The companies will get middle-manager bloat, MBAs and accountants start pinching pennies, systems get dragged down in technical debt, and more nimble competitors eventually outcompete. But we're not there yet.

you’re comparing fang to average startup. instead you should compare fang to top tier startup. as that’s the choice people who get fang offers make... in almost all examples i can think of, the top tier startup pays more.

furthermore before they were fang companies, google was the top tier startup and IBM was the equivalent to FANG.

> in almost all examples i can think of, the top tier startup pays more.

WeWork and Airbnb want a word.

> a word.

A word about what? Their salaries are certainly competitive with, if not higher paying than, Google and Stripe's are objectively higher.

Not according to public info. When I left Google an L5 was commonly clearing 500k in liquid comp. Airbnb and WeWork weren’t even close and that was before the implosions.

airbnb pays a lot more than google lol. and they are actually doing great now despite layoffs at the realllt beginning of covid

Nah https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Airbnb,Google&track=Software...

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