At the end of his book AMP it up, Frank Slootman provides some career tips. The things he focuses on. 1. Join a company that's growing and moving up. He talks about getting in the elevator by joining the right company. And how everyone during certain years at Microsoft did well (just one example). 2. Next he recommends ignoring compensation in the early days of your career.
I see this at my company sometimes. Mid level engineer will switch from Stream to Google and be surprised that the comp is higher. Of course it's higher, what you're sacrificing is career growth. Early on in your career thats usually not the right move. (of course some people crush it at google. google is probably not the best example, while slower than a fast growing startup its still doing well. Someone else joined the FT or some public companies that literally don't grow.
If you care about total comp the best options are.A. Grow your expertise so that you can join a FAANG company at a director level. B. Join a series A/B company and hope you can impact it enough to reach a good outcome.
The other thing people dont get it is that you're not negotiating salary once. You have to continue to deliver that value to the company. So if you sell yourself really well, get a massive salary, at some point the company will notice that you're not driving that much value. As an example see the people who joined Fast. I'd look for companies that share their revenue numbers with their team and are transparent.
Sometimes companies that pay the best are also under water in their stock options since they raised at a 200x revenue valuation. It gives them a lot of resources to pay top dollar, but its also more similar to joining a company where you don't get upside.
Not to be misunderstood, in general it's good to take the higher salary. Some people just don't negotiate well and some companies take advantage of that. (Still many engineers in the EU at <40k). You just want to make sure you understand the full picture and not focus only on salary.
"Of course it's higher, what you're sacrificing is career growth. Early on in your career thats usually not the right move."
I heard that a lot early in my career, having started out in startups. To some extent it's true for the first ~4 years: you gain a lot more background knowledge, problem solving ability, and confidence by wearing lots of hats and owning lots of problems end-to-end.
But I think you have to be realistic about how experience transfers. FAANG-level companies typically discount basically all experience in startups and small businesses they haven't heard of. You might be a senior developer in a small startup, but you'll get downleveled to an L3 new grad level at a FAANG. And you'll make more money, so they figure you'll take it. Or you might be a C-suite founder and (assuming you still have your technical chops) end up as a L6 eng manager (again, probably with better comp, assuming your founder stock isn't going up).
I've never once seen a Director hired from the outside without a.) coming from a Director position at a peer company, eg. Facebook -> Google or b.) having enough money that they don't need to work ever again. By far most Directors at FAANGs are promoted from within after delivering a big win for the company; the next largest category is founders whose startup is acquired; following that are Directors jumping from a peer company; and finally there are former founders and executives that are retired or hanging out as an EIR at a VC firm waiting for their next gig.
If it's early in your career (<10 years) I think the best possible thing you could be doing for your career is SWE at a FAANG. You're too young to move into management (IMO) and nothing will give you that level of resume credential. The real life experience of working on big projects is important too.
After that I think you have a point. I work at a FAANG as a SWE (15 YOE) and want to move into management, but it requires a SWE promotion first to staff engineer I don't think I'm capable of getting at this company. (I've been a staff engineer at a previous firm though).
I could switch to a lower tier company and definitely find a way to move into management and develop my career on that ladder but I would likely have to take a big pay cut. I think the trouble is people with 10+ years of experience are like me and have families and a mortgage. It's just not an option to make less for me even if the future was bright.
EDIT: As someone pointed out, 10 years entirely in FAANG is probably not as good as a varied career that includes FAANG.
10 years is also (very roughly) the historical average doubling time for an investment in the s&p 500. one way to look at that is for every $1 you didn't save at age 25 while building experience at a "scrappy" startup, you need to save $2 at age 35 just to break even on retirement. that's probably not infeasible; you don't have to double your salary to double your savings. but it's a significant amount of drag you need to overcome for the "trade comp for career growth" advice to work out.
You are absolutely right in terms of resume credential, but in terms of engineering experience I don't think it's so cut and dried. The ability to work on large systems, and access to mentorship is unparalleled, but you also miss out on end-to-end perspective and how to focus on solving the most critical problem in the simplest way. FAANG has some of the best talent in the world (if you're lucky enough to be able to work with them), but it is also has many smart but unmotivated clock punchers who would struggle to execute without the world-class tooling and resources that they take for granted.
Working for a smaller, fast-growing company will give you faster feedback loops, and a closer connection to the business that will give you a broader perspective on what is truly necessary vs FAANG best practices for scale. Ironically this makes you more fit for leadership because you can then see patterns which repeat themselves in all companies, but are obfuscated by specialization and huge org sizes. By contrast, if you join a big company you'll get better at the corporate jargon and cultural games, but you won't have the same visceral understanding of what really matters and why.
For much of the past century, the best career advice in the world was: go to IBM, General Motors, General Electric. Climb the ladder for a few decades, get a pension, retire at the top 1% of the income pyramid. That worked great until it didn't, and millions of people got left with no savings or useful job skills.
Today's world offers so many more paths for talented builders, beyond joining the currently hot company as a cog in the giant ad-tech machine and hoping for the best. As a data point, go read last week's article on how Sidekiq has made $13 million for a solo developer.
I’ve published 2 books, created a significant open source project, and was staff engineer at a Fortune 50 company. Was reasonably well known as a blogger and speaker in the JS community too. (I’ve given up on OSS since FAANG)
But you know how I’ll be introduced? They’ll say I was “ex-FAANG”. None of that other stuff matters in comparison.
I’m not at all saying it’s the only path, I’m saying it’s the best and certainly most reliable one.
I see this at my company sometimes. Mid level engineer will switch from Stream to Google and be surprised that the comp is higher. Of course it's higher, what you're sacrificing is career growth. Early on in your career thats usually not the right move. (of course some people crush it at google. google is probably not the best example, while slower than a fast growing startup its still doing well. Someone else joined the FT or some public companies that literally don't grow.
https://www.saastr.com/why-if-you-quit-every-year-you-wont-m...
If you care about total comp the best options are.A. Grow your expertise so that you can join a FAANG company at a director level. B. Join a series A/B company and hope you can impact it enough to reach a good outcome.
The other thing people dont get it is that you're not negotiating salary once. You have to continue to deliver that value to the company. So if you sell yourself really well, get a massive salary, at some point the company will notice that you're not driving that much value. As an example see the people who joined Fast. I'd look for companies that share their revenue numbers with their team and are transparent.
Sometimes companies that pay the best are also under water in their stock options since they raised at a 200x revenue valuation. It gives them a lot of resources to pay top dollar, but its also more similar to joining a company where you don't get upside.
Not to be misunderstood, in general it's good to take the higher salary. Some people just don't negotiate well and some companies take advantage of that. (Still many engineers in the EU at <40k). You just want to make sure you understand the full picture and not focus only on salary.