While joining a FAANG in the past was most likely the richest path, that may not be true today.
>If you want to get rich, your best bet on a risk-adjusted basis is to join a profitable and growing public company. Google for short. Make $200-500k all-in a year, work hard and move up a level every 3-5 years, sell options as they vest (in case you joined Enron), and retire at 60, rich. This plan works every time.
High end of Staff appears bumping into the million dollar range once bonuses come around at some of these places.
FAANG pays well, but if you check what I’m saying against Levels.fyi, that’s a pretty exceptional situation for someone with that little experience.
Are you saying the median total comp for a 7-year total experience Facebook engineer is $1m? If so, what’s your source? (Or what are you claiming? The top decile? The top quartile? Etc.)
3-5 if you don't get promoted after a year and a half or something they mark your packet expectation is you go from 3-5 very quick on average and even faster at the tail.
I did 3-7 in 6 years at Google and it was the fastest in the larger org with >500 people. You can do 4.5 at fb easy.
And yes at fb 7 years would rack lots of engineers 1+ m, even assuming modest gains.
If you don't believe it, it's your choice but not all companies treat employees as average. Google optimizes for average, fb rewards high performers...
I am quite skeptical that the median time for a new-grad hire to get to L7 at FB is 7 years or fewer, but I guess this is something that we could answer with some weekend scraping of LinkedIn. ;)
Not everyone cares about the money though. After a certain point you get tired of politics and process and just want to build things. A successful startup culture seems like a win win.