throwawayfang1

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

Smaller companies generally can't "pretend to be FANG" because the very best people don't want to work there, they want to work at FANG where they can get paid 90th percentile compensation (you already know this; check levels.fyi -- it's pretty staggering how high senior engineers get paid in all-cash liquid total compensation at these companies). If you are a top software engineer, why would you sacrifice 60-80 hours per week of your time and not get duly compensated for it?

throwawayfang1

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

The only FANG that doesn't do this is Google (annual review only, no Stack Ranking, Needs Improvement rating is only for 1-4% of the company). Also, Google is the only one without an "up or out" policy limiting your maximum time between promotions to four years (i.e. you get canned for not meeting your expectations for career growth). This forced attrition policy is why FANG companies are always rapidly hiring (even during COVID-19), have tons of open positions, and the average tenure for software engineers is only 2.5 years. The mentality is that these companies hire the best of the best, pay the best, and as a result, expect your very best performance in return.

throwawayfang1

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

Right. People who go to the world's top universities are in the position where they don't HAVE to work for a big company. I went to one of the listed "second-tier universities" and work at FANG (and to be clear, not Amazon), and I don't think I have a single coworker from Harvard or Stanford. I have one coworker from Oxford who considers himself the "failure" of his graduating class because he only works at a big tech company.

Big tech companies are sweat shops, offering just enough pay to have the TOP end of an upper-middle class lifestyle (after sufficient robbery by the tax man, since you're not quite rich enough for any of the Trump-esque tax loopholes to apply), in exchange for the expected 60-80 hour weeks. You still have to work for a living, and you're competing in Stack Ranking with the majority of employees who are visa workers (hiring visa workers is a PLUS for these companies) that will happily sacrifice their family life and weekends to avoid deportation by being slotted into the "bottom 10%" during the bi-annual performance review (which means you get fired). Sure, it's a local optimum for a lot of people (work insanely hard and sacrifice your health to drive a Porsche/Tesla and own a house/luxury condo in a top-tier city), but make no mistake, it is a second-tier lifestyle.

On the other hand, people from Harvard and Yale are UPPER class -- not upper-MIDDLE class. This means they have last names like Bush or Clinton, get ushered into upper management or C-level at their father's companies, go "work" for cushy jobs at rentseekers like PE/VC/real estate with corporate credit cards, run for office, repeatedly start failed companies, or go indefinitely "exploring" or "finding the next thing to do" (courtesy of their trust fund).

Meanwhile, the vast majority of my graduating class is slaving away as entry-level rat racers at FANG, investment banks, legal, Big 4, medical residencies, etc.

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