Hacker News Reader

Comment by opportune | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely this.

A lot of startups these days skimp by hiring sub-FAANG SWEs with less than 5 yoe, and it shows in their products. Lack of product maturity, bad engineering (worst horror story I’ve heard recently is Wayfair), resume driven development / over-engineering / cargo culting, huge teams to work on simple features. All so they can hire two middle-skill 22 year olds instead of a skilled 35 year old.

If you’re able to work at FAANG it is just bad financial sense to work at most startups unless you want to play the lottery. If a place offered 40-50hr/week, $250k salary, 15% target bonus AND generous RSUs/options it would be able to compete with FAANG. But not a lot of places do that, and those that do are often the very bubbly ones with uncertain futures

View on HN

Who/what is a “sub-FAANG SWE”? Are you suggesting software engineers who don’t work at one of the FAANG’s are subpar? Apologies if I’m misunderstanding.

I think it's more referring to compensation. If you're only offering half the pay of some of the alternatives, you're simply not going to get a shot at most of the highest-skilled job seekers. They will, sensibly, tend to go work for the highest-paying employers. Free market for labor and all that.

I guess I can see that (to a certain extent), thanks for offering your explanation.

What about all the skilled software engineers that DON'T want to live in SF.

From what I've seen most startups DO expect you to move to SF, though. They just don't want to pay a competitive salary.

I assume they’re saying there’s a certain bar for FAANG SWEs. That doesn’t also imply all (or even the average) SWEs outside of FAANG are below it.

I thought FAANG weren't hiring 35-year-olds?

There are tons of 35 year olds at FAANG and they do hire a lot of people who are currently 35 too.

Correct. The hard threshold is 40.

Definitely not true. It seems to me that, if anything, Google has been prioritizing experienced industry hires recently, many of whom are in that age range.

That's interesting. Does "recently" mean it was not always so? My untested and rumour-based thoughts had been that they skewed towards younger (no family/ties/more energy/less negotiation skills) employees, and you were dead after 30.

Sub-FANNG SWEs? 250k+ or gtfo? I sincerely hope Google and it’s Ilk don’t represent the best of the best because that would mean the best of our indistry would be found severely wanting.

The average at these companies may not be very good given the inherent noise in hiring and promo processes, but most very good engineers end up at one of these companies since it's a much better deal than going to a startup.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com