> Most of the people I know who wanted to work at google, and a few that worked at google, now have higher paying, more enjoyable, and more stable jobs elsewhere
Honest question (this is really not a challenge), care to share where? I always thought of the FAANGs (collectively) giving the best compensation in the business. Which companies are paying more than Google but with more stability?
I've been really happy at Zipline. My salary is comparable to when I was at Google, and my equity has way more potential. As far as stability goes, I can't imagine a company being more supportive of its employees.
I was talking about base salary. Zipline has been very proactive about making adjustments to stay fair and competitive, and I have only positive things to say. Regarding total compensation, yes Zipline equity is riskier than Google stock grants. I'm not going to share details, but so far it's trending favorably.
I've never worried about compensation details so much, and instead tried to find projects with interesting technical problems that bring intrinsic value to humanity, and a company of people worth spending my life with. My first job out of school, my salary was 40k below other offers I had. It just seemed like the best use of my time and energy. In time it brought me what I can only describe as an embarrassment of riches. My coworkers on the self driving car project at Google were perhaps the most brilliant people I've ever met. To paraphrase Zipline's CEO, they want employees doing the best work of their lives, and it's a marathon rather than a sprint. I have countless examples of the company, its employees, and its management going above and beyond. We're literally saving lives, too.
Google's equity is cash. Ziplines is not real. I would much rather work at Zipline but given the delta in cost I would rather not forgo $1-200K a year to work there given bay area housing costs.
Each person has their own risk tolerance. Not taking on any risk at all is certainly safe, but also limiting. I've always taken a probabilistic "expected value" approach when weighing financial decisions, and so far it's worked out favorably. I don't think it's fair to conflate liquidity with reality. My equity in Zipline is real enough, at least to the Internal Revenue Service!
A few yeas back several of them moved to netflix, and a few moved to airbnb and uber. I'm sure google still pays executives well above any other company, the people I knew at the time were fairly inexperienced and new to the field, and from what I heard google seemed to undervalue them relative to what other Bay Area companies were offering at the time.
Of course, this was a few years back, I'm not sure if the landscape has changed now for better or for worse.
This doesn't exactly answer your question but some FAANGS pay better than others, and its related to the "desirability" of the company. Eg. Amazon started beating out Google's pay, since people wanted to work at google, and had to be coheres to working at amazon.
I can't answer where pays better than FAANG, but companies in the bay (eg. Uber) are starting to approach the salary. Even smaller no-name bay companies are starting to match on base salary (equity+bonus is harder to match).
OK, thanks, that pretty much is how I saw it. E.g. I definitely knew some FAANGs pay better than others (have heard from an Amazon recruiter straight up "We never lose people due to compensation"), but haven't heard of other companies paying more (unsurprisingly given the profit margins of the FAANGs).
Thus, I'm going to be a little skeptical when I hear about people taking higher paying jobs with more stability elsewhere.
> Even smaller no-name bay companies are starting to match on base salary (equity+bonus is harder to match).
FWIW- I see a lot of places with matching or better base than FANG, but it's precisely because the equity at FAANG is so high.
The only places I see with meaningfully higher pay than FAANG + hot tech companies of the day (ex. Doordash, Datadog, ...) are hedge funds. Curious if there is anywhere else
One thing that complicates this is that Google (and probably the rest of FAANG but I don’t have experience there) is happy to severely downlevel people versus the positions they could get elsewhere. They also aggressively cut compensation if you live outside of SF/NYC. I’ve done a couple stints as an L4 SWE at Google and it is one of the worst paying places I’ve worked - but that’s because I’m comparing it to larger scope roles at smaller companies. Whereas yeah Staff or Director at Google is pretty hard to compete with.
> I’ve done a couple stints as an L4 SWE at Google
I’m curious. Does this mean you’ve left Google and returned multiple times at the same level while having better jobs elsewhere?
Not to be critical but why? (I ask because I’m considering returning to old places down/equileveled after being laid off somewhere and curious your reasons)
Yep, that’s exactly what I did. I came back during COVID (after leaving to move away from an office five years prior) and chose to return at the level I left at rather than deal with leetcode interviews. It was a rough personal time for me (two kids under five during COVID daycare shutdowns) and I wanted the stability/benefits of the big G, and didn’t want to take the risk of an interview that I didn’t have time/energy to prepare for.
I feel a little bit bad because I very much used their benefits and then left again to go to a more appropriately leveled job. But going back to L4 at a megacorp was kind of mind numbing, and the compensation got so bad after the stock drop and location based pay cuts that I couldn’t justify staying any longer.
L4 at Google is basically “mid level” aka you’ve proven yourself past a college hire but you’re not a senior engineer with lots of experience.
So doing a few jobs as an L4 is what’s unexpected because after experience at another role, and additional knowledge gained, etc ideally they’d be able to return as L5+.
Honest question (this is really not a challenge), care to share where? I always thought of the FAANGs (collectively) giving the best compensation in the business. Which companies are paying more than Google but with more stability?