Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

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> but are just burned out doing the same boring problems. Several have taken massive pay cuts to go work in tiny firms.

I hires for a remote office that was near a certain FAANG office. We had applicants out of the FAANG company every week who just wanted out and many even let us know in their cover letters that they were willing to take a significant pay cut.

I know the HN trope is that FAANG jobs are all about doing some LeetCode to pass the interview and then it’s all easy from there, but that’s not actually the norm in FAANG jobs. If you’re collecting a high salary and working for a highly-paid, highly-motivated boss, the pressure is going to be high. It’s not for everyone and a lot of people discover that the high pay isn’t entirely worth it after a few years.

IME: in my career I’m always a bit under or overworked it seems. Getting better at boundaries, but I suspect this is the case for many in our industry. Choose your poison, and realize it may not be what you want your whole life.

Maybe, but that's very unlikely. Usually FAANG workers (I'm one myself) if they are young will move to new hot startups in the hopes of a big pay off at IPO time, or if they are older ,then will take a small pay cut for better WLB (to raise their kids, etc.), the other pattern I have seen is people move to companies that are fully remote or allow working from other countries (digital nomads friendly). One thing many people ignore about FAANG is: you get to choose what project you work on, at least at Amazon and Google, you can work on anything from Finance, Robotics, Retail, and front-end , back-end, etc... Obviously there will be people who quit FAANG for other reason, and just want to be the lead of a small team at a smaller company, etc. Another myth you seem to believe is thinking high pay equates to high pressure or bad WLB , also wrong, plenty of datapoints on sites like Blind, Glassdoor, etc. I do agree is not for everyone, but it definitely worth the effort to get in, you learn a lot, and you get expose to all kind of problems.

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