Total derail but:
> I'm a Principal Engineer at a FAAMNG company.
Does anyone other than a MS employee put an M in FAANG?
> I'm a Principal Engineer at a FAAMNG company.
Does anyone other than a MS employee put an M in FAANG?
Depending on what you're discussing when you're listing those companies, it may make sense to include them.
FAANG is about the pay, not the prestige of the company. They pay so far above the rest of the market that they are really only competing for talent with themselves. Average total comp at Netflix is well north of $500k for an individual contributor.
- MS: $185k
- Amazon: $230k
- Google: $267k
I work for a large media company as at Sr director level equivalent engineer. The pay is certainly not north of 500k
In the U.S., financial services shops that figured out tech is money. Or, rather, that time is money and tech shrinks time. Think banks’ trading groups, hedge funds, etc.
Along with those, a larger sector of FS bitten with the transformation bug. Even in the non trading related financial services, if a company’s emphasis is on figuring out how to tech before getting eaten by challengers or juggernauts, the pay may indicate how existential the need.
On the other hand, many in the financial industrial complex haven’t realized this yet, and are still trying to “take costs out”, doing reductions in force of knowledgable workers, offshoring any roles not understood by the executives, etc., or paying bottom dollar domestically for coders and IT support, rather than well enough for software or systems engineers.
Large companies are likely to have a mix of these models all at the same time, so understand what type of group you’re looking at.
Also note that financial titles are often inverse ranks of engineering titles, with SVPs below directors and VPs as the junior-most roles.
Note(1): Pro-employee compensation disclosure laws are starting to get passed where (a) you don’t have to say what you used to earn, and (b) a company may have to disclose the comp for your role and similar roles the moment you ask, not after you make it to offer. Check the laws governing both your zip code and the company’s and know your rights to help even out information asymmetry.
Note(2): Performance multipliers are worth paying for. Automation is worth paying for. Anything thought through and written once to do work, that then does that work many times in less time, or for many people in less time, or both, is worth paying for. FANG code runs at staggering scale. FS code makes staggering money in milliseconds. Look for places where each line of code is multiplying output — how many fold drives how much that code, and its engineers, should be worth.
You'll actually notice that none of the FAANG are on the top 10 of that list. FAANGs definitely pay well, but these days "FAANG" is outdated, IMO. I've seen it "FAANGMULA" sometimes (FAANG + Microsoft, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb) but even that still leaves out other high payers like Stripe, Box, Bytedance, etc.
But yeah, that's all FAANG is and I'm amazed anyone thinks it's anything more standardized or meaningful or precisely defined. It's shorthand for the biggest and most influential companies in the tech industry at the moment, at least from the perspective of people on the outside looking in. If someone wants to the throw an M into FAANG I totally get it.
According to Wikipedia at least https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Tech
Edit: Not popular maybe, but appropriate still.
Not meant as a snide/flippant remark; this shit is what keeps me up at night.
Or the Bezos quote about “imagining myself 80 on a rocking chair – will I regret not doing this?”
As a young adult mostly lacking in wisdom of my own, I’ve found myself coming back to these quotes time and time again. Their philosophy is sound.
If you don’t want balance, then you should go all in. In general, people should take more risk. This is especially true in tech where the downside is often vastly overstated – even if you fail completely, you can get a new job in two days.
My advice to anyone at FAANG feeling unfulfilled is to quit and take a risk to do something awesome. Even if you fail you’ll still grow more than you would working for a megacorp with a recruiting funnel that intrinsically selects for conformists and rule followers.
That being said, it's hard to compare directly. I know many M folks, and some F, G, A and A folks. The M folks probably work at most 75% of the hours of the others. I for one would much rather work a standard 9-5 and make a lot than work 996 (not that extreme, but kinda) and make downright absurd amounts...
They were an OS only, non-internet company, compared to the rest. When the acronym was created, it was still that way.
Even now, they make most of their butter from OS installs, although yes, they have branched out a lot.
Originally: Intel, Cisco, Microsoft, Dell
Then (in 2007): Apple, Research in Motion (Blackberry), Google, Amazon
Others were major market movers and shakers.
There’s never been any good reason not to include Microsoft except that for a long time it was considered old and stodgy.
Netflix doesn’t make sense in terms of market cap, and it also doesn’t make sense in 2021 when it’s more a media company than a technology company. Don’t get me wrong, they totally nailed it on a ton of tech fronts, and deserve their technical accolades…it just looks strange next to the others.
Oh, thinking about Netflix, I just figured it out. It’s about SWE salaries, and not really related to much else.
…although if that’s it, then Amazon doesn’t really deserve it’s spot any more than Microsoft.
Which isn't bad -- I assume Disney also has a number of highly-paid SWEs -- but for me the difference between FAAMG and Netflix is that (as far as I can tell) Netflix doesn't employee a giant pile of SWEs doing blue sky research / doomed projects only tangentially related to the core business.
because I wouldn't put video streaming service among tech behemoths that create operating systems, compilers, programming languages, databases, put shitton into ML research and many, many other
I'm not saying that video streaming is easy, but I believe any of those could do it easily from technical standpoint.
Google, Facebook and Amazon already do, idk about Apple and MS.
Never heard of FAAMNG though.
FAGMA or FAAM have been suggested as updated terms in light of the metrics / characteristics that initially led to the term FA(A)NG being coined.
These terms were certainly not originally intended to describe high salaries for engineers ;)
FAANGMULA
and
TARANTULAS
fun meme
There are also a handful of sub $100bn marketcap publicly traded tech companies that pay on par of FAANGs and may have more enticing vesting schedules too. Greater upside as well.
Also, did you get a lot of those participation trophies when you were a kid? I read a take on those recently, along the lines of, "if the adults always praise everyone, then their praise is meaningless and can't be trusted". Ie, a recipe for impostor syndrome in later life. I certainly experience that. Anytime I participate in an activity that I'm naturally talented at, I figure it's just not that difficult and I've done nothing special.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=participation+...
Not to pick nits or anything!