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0 pointsnotmars3y ago0 comments

do they? You seem to generalize a bit no? I have 2 grads that are pretty happy with their life and their salary right now, and are starting to look into buying a house. So I'm doubtful it generalize well.

You can have pretty good salary in non-FAANGs, make a difference, and match your own software values with what you're doing.

I would even argue that by doing so, you're elevating those company, allowing them to then compete a bit more closer to FAANGs comps, and "stealing your talent" away from those less-matching software values, creating what I believe (from my own values) to be a virtuous circle.

Or you can grind at FAANGs, accept stack ranking and elevated salary, play the yearly promotion game and end up with a very nice pile of money. Then clearly do not expect them to change, and I would argue: you do not get to complain unless you are actively trying to change them from the inside

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scarface743y ago

I am not complaining. I work for one reason only - to exchange my labor for money to support ny addiction to food and shelter.

And let’s not pretend that startups are trying to compete with BigTech. They are just trying to survive long enough to get acquired. Out of all of the companies that YC has founded, how many have gone public?

If you are working for a company that has accepted VC money, your “values” don’t amount to much at all. The only values that matter are those of your investor and all they care about is an exit - statistically by getting acquired.

The opposite choice is accepting Monopoly money - “equity”.

True my unvested RSUs are half what they were at their highs. But at least I can sell them and trade them for real money once they vest every six months.

Don’t get me wrong, I spent my entire career from 1996-2020 working for mostly unknown companies working as an “enterprise developer”.

The only reason I fell into my current BigTech job is because I both know how to talk to customers and I can create pretty diagrams, PowerPoint slides and a shit ton of yaml and HCL and can develop (cloud consulting department)

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