Note that this is true for many reasons, not all of which are related to technical ability. Not everyone should try to get a FAANG job, either.
Factors candidates may consider:
* how much time they want to spend interviewing/prepping
* what their previous experience has been
* where they went to school
* where they are willing to live
* what type of work they like to do
* what type of organizations they enjoy being part of (largeco, smallco)
* how much control they want over their work
* what kind of impact they want to have
* how much they want to learn (and what type of knowledge--general vs specific)
In addition to salary, all of these play a role in determining whether a startup, small biz, other software company or FAANG make sense for an individual.
I mean "how much time they want to spend interviewing/prepping"?? If a FAANG will average 2-3x payout, it would be insane not to be willing to prep for literally months if that made the difference between getting a job and not.
It's not for me (or you) to decide for others, however :) . I just think there are many more dimensions than raw salary to consider. You could work like a dog for 5 years at a FAANG, make a ton of money, and die just after you retire. It's all weighing the risks and rewards and there isn't a formula for that.
BTW yes, 2-3 months of free time to prep may not be worth it given:
* one will miss/sacrifice other aspects of life
* one may not get the job. Nothing's guaranteed, after all
* the job may not be right even if they get it
At that salary you're looking at probably a 15 minute commute. By bike even if your office isn't in SF itself or you don't mind the hills. It's the startup employees in the bay area that don't have the money to live closer or have their own places.
>You could work like a dog for 5 years at a FAANG
From what I've found, startups and non-tech companies work you a lot more than FAANG especially if you're not looking for fast promotion in FAANG.
(A $1.5M mortgage is around $6k per month today.)
And at the end of the year, even if what’s left over in terms of percentage of income is the same (and it’s usually not, because many COL expenses don’t scale linearly with the cost of housing), you end up with more in the bank to send your kid to college or to retire.
You are presenting a theoretical ideal that is probably close to unattainable.
- how many tech startups are in Birmingham?
- how many VCs would be OK funding a startup in Birmingham? I know we're in COVID era now, but how long before VCs again start telling you to move to SF/SV (or perhaps NY)
- how many 150k salaried tech startup jobs are in Birmingham? I'd estimate in the single digits, probably zero.
I earn well, so granted I'm not turning down as much as some would, but to drag out a tired old saying, I work to live, I don't live to work. I have plenty of things I want to do - some of them I can do in the right job, many I can't.
Of course one of the luxuries of already earning well is that the multiple of my current salary it'd take to convince me to take a job I don't actively love the sound of is far higher that it otherwise would be.
I don't know many other professions where high salaries are pretty much a given, without cutthroat competition among your peers?
You can get high payouts building a company, becoming a top lawyer or medical professional, but the investment in time, effort, and money is much higher, and the chances of success are lower.
Could I speed this up by another 5-10 years by moving to California to help monopolists serve ads, suppress competition and lure users into walled gardens? Sure I could. And what's wrong with stoking the world's most overpriced und undersupplied real estate market with another willful participant in the process.
That said, "insane" strikes me as an extreme choice of words for someone forgoing this golden opportunity.
My experience in the one of them has been the opposite of what some of the bullet points implies, or at least in a 'positive' direction.
I know for a while the rumors were basically that if you hadn't gone to a place like Stanford, you weren't getting a job, at least at Google (Maybe Facebook too?)
Is this still the case? (Was it ever the case, or were things a more flexible?)
If you have experience already, where you went to school gets dramatically less important the more experience you have. I went to a decent (but definitely not top tier) state school and have 15 years experience, had no trouble getting interviews at FAANG companies and passed interviews at a few.
This is at all relevant only for getting into the interview process, which is something that is largely handled by recruiting. Once a candidate makes it to a phone screen with someone like me, where they went to school has no bearing on whether they move forward in the process.
