Anyone else feel trapped in FANG? How did you get out?

My advice would be to put your head down, live like a monk, and save/invest money. Get promoted as far as you can, but don't burn yourself out. If you see yourself having a family someday, spend your free time on finding a spouse.

Five years in, you'll have a huge pile of cash and an insane chunk on your resume that will almost certainly guarantee you an interview wherever you want. Once you hit that point, take some time off and do literally anything. Start a startup, be a contractor, get a new degree.

You have stumbled onto the sort of prosperity (easy low-stress job) that 99.95% of the world literally dreams about. To throw it away because you're not "creatively expressing yourself" would be foolish.

This advice doesn't apply if you're a relentlessly competitive founder type like Gates or Bezons, but if you were of that mentality, I doubt you'd be having the same troubles you are.

I checked my stock rewards balance one day, realized I didn't need to work anymore, and then quit. It's worked well so far.

Your story reminds me of a Peter Thiel anecdote on "Leaving Alcatraz." [1] The gist of the story is Peter Thiel is living his "tracked" life. He goes to an elite school, studies law, joins an elite law firm... And discovers he doesn't like it, so he quits. He's a couple months in. When he's quitting his colleague tells him "It's nice to know it is possible to escape Alcatraz." But, of course, it's possible for anyone to "escape" the doors aren't locked and leaving is always allowed. You are made a prisoner to the status quo by your own fear of change.

1 - (I think this is the right clip but my speakers are currently not working) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in2ktnsfwkw

> my job isn’t that stressful.

If it wasn't that stressful, you wouldn't be posting this. Feeling unfulfilled is stressful. You are stressed and you are probably burning out (yes it's possible to burn out on boredom).

Change things. Start with easy low risk changes and work your way out from there. If you want to stay in the job you have now, you likely need to change your approach to how you try to make an impact, because what you're doing now obviously isn't working.

But there are likely teams in your company where you'd feel more fulfilled. If not, being promoted at one megacorp is basically catnip for recruiters at others.

My 4 big reasons for wanting to leave my current FAANG:

1. I'm not learning things that feel relevant outside the company. Our build processes, templating language, version control, and even our IDE are all proprietary and internal-only. It requires a lot of work to master these things, and that mastery is not transferable anywhere else.

2. I continually scan the internal job boards, and have yet to see another position that looks significantly more appealing.

3. The amount of red tape required to make any change, while expected and understandable for enterprise software, makes it hard to feel innovative or creative.

4. It takes 2 minutes to recompile/reload after every trivial changes. This is hugely detrimental to my "flow," and this is unlikely to ever be fixed due to the size of the codebase.

Been that, did that, and now I'm out.

FANG's are fundamentally mature, and the key thing to understand is "Price's Law" which states that half of the work is done by the square root of the people. It's a brutal reality, and you will find yourself with a tremendous amount of muck to deal with.

The first challenge is to respect this as a fundamental property of big companies and a self-fulfilling despair.

My advice is to focus on a period of time towards just building and maximizing wealth. Find opportunities, talk to people, do what is asked of you, try to push limits on making things better. Once you have a nice bank account, then you can take freedom.

That's the enduring aspect of golden handcuffs because it's brutal to be bored, but then you have more freedom to explore and pick better opportunities. Right now, I'm living a monastic code machine lifestyle and it's pretty great.

https://www.adama-platform.com/2022/07/02/the-path-of-the-mo...

The second challenge is the discipline to suffer. My bias is to accept that there will be a time in your life where you must maximize your discipline, build wealth, and then balance for the later years.

I'm 40 and basically retired. Granted, I want to improve my cashflow as I recently hired a private chef, but that's a great problem to have.

>What did you do?

quit. I mean it's that simple really. If you don't like the job you're doing and it's not meaningful, get another job. You'll have a good resume, so that shouldn't be a practical issue.

I think any other advice is really just copium. Collecting more money and joining a knitting circle or the bowling club isn't fulfilling, neither is retiring at 40 and even in a non FANG dev job you likely earn twice a middle class wage, and the only thing you don't get back is your time. It's scary but nothing's worse than not changing and regretting it later.

You have one of the most desirable jobs in the world. Economic self-determination is a luxury of the rich, which you will be in a short while if you just stay put and keep working. Just get some hobbies outside work and stack money until you can afford to do nothing but what you want.

I am curious if you will find any useful advice here. I mean, there is some great advice in this thread, but it's really hard for anyone who isn't you to help in this situation.

Here are some questions you should ask yourself that might be helpful:

- If you were laid off tomorrow what would you do?

- What are some things you would LOVE to do? What would it take to accomplish the things on this list?

- What are your minimum long term financial goals? The idea here being that, depending on the minimal lifestyle you are comfortable with, you would need to stay at your current job (and invest wisely) for X years. It might make the current job much more enjoyable if you know that in X years you will have 100% of your time available for projects of your choice without financial consideration.

- Are there ways to satisfy what is missing AND keep the job? For example, starting something as a side project, even if you can't devote full time to it. You can always decide in the future if you need to pursue it. (ie: don't force an all or nothing decision when you don't have to)

I was working at a similar company the last two years. I was completely bored and not learning anything. Now I feel like I am learning more in a daily basis than I learned in an average month in Big Co. at a startup.

Working at the big companies is a bit like choosing a local maximum. Yeah you maxed out comp for whatever your role is in the industry. But now you flattened your growth and learning curve.

There are extreme greater heights you can reach…out there in the jungle. But that is unsafe and risky to do.

To go up, you end up having to go down, first. That means letting go of the false local Minimum you have achieved (which feels like a maximum).

That means less money in something more risky and nascent to get way more money and promotions and experience … later.

Startups are a completely different “skill tree.” I realized I would rather make less money and work harder if I was learning more and meeting a lot more people.

Easier to do when you are younger. Much, much harder to do when you are older.

You need to write a coherent plan if you are going to take a risk.

1. What is your plan A,B,C and D if A fails? Seriously. Write it down. If I quit and the startup fails or whatever, then what? Write it out.

2. You better be choosing something very high growth and exciting if you are walking away from big money. I left to join Web3 because I believe Web3 is a $100 trillion (all money on earth) market and don’t see any indication that the incentives for it to grow are going to slow down.

There are only a few markets right now that fit this bill. Climate Tech looks really good.

If you quit and join some low growth market, what’s the point. You should quit to get a very rare combination of hard to get skills.

FAANG sucks because it is a race to see who can sit there and tolerate FAANG the longest. If you are creative, you won’t last. Ideal FAANG employee is more patient.

So do you have something better to do with your time? If you are just bored, but don’t have a goal, that is insufficient.

Without saying it explicitly, you've said that your current job is pretty good. Good money, getting promoted, the company offers side opportunities for growth, etc. The only problem seems to be that your actual job responsibilities are too easy or too narrow.

If you're at an early stage in your career that might be inevitable at any large company, they tend to have a deep bench of talent and assign greater responsibility to more senior people first. A small company can be different.

Fundamentally you are not trapped by the job, you can quit it any time but you lack sufficient motivation to do so. You didn't articulate any great reasons to leave this job. They may exist but I think you need to find and clarify them. For example do you have long term goals you're very passionate about which a different job would support better?

> I have a good manager, a good comp and my job isn’t that stressful.

You have it made! Try not to let your job become your identity.

This needs to be a discussion about acceptance. Acceptance that for the first 3-5 years of your career you will likely be working on decidedly boring sh-t regardless of where you work. This isn't uncommon.

> I just get assigned straightforward work from my manager that the product managers and “leadership” assign to our team with barely any input on the overall project or ability to propose new projects.

You've just described most jobs. From your username it appears you work at Amazon AWS. Guess what, most of the hard problems have already been solved. Every job needs worker bees; was this not clear during the interview? This is giving me "new grad wants to be CEO in a day" vibes. To quote comedian Louis CK, "Yes this job sucks, that's why we gave it to you." NASA doesn't let the new grads lead the design of the next spaceship, and Apple doesn't let the entry level engineers decide what the next phone will look like.

> because I have a good manager, a good comp and my job isn’t that stressful

So you're better off than most people as it is. My advice? Find a life outside of work. The worst feeling is the one when you blink and realize you've just wasted half your life working at a unfulfilling job, but you wasted your time and opportunities around the job. Make the best of what you have.

Let me be a voice of reason from within the dark forest.

I work at a 9 (soon to be 10!) person startup. The amount of challenge is unlimited. The sense of purpose virtually unbounded. I feel like I could grab on hard to anything and take it to the moon right now.

That said, this takes energy out of you like you would not believe. I don’t have enough left over for things like games, netflix, shopping, and social events. Keeping the startup alive is 90% of my life right now. The other 10% is keeping myself alive. HN accounts for most of my free time these days.

It does feel exhilarating some days, but there are also some where you desperately crave the sort of quiet and stability you’d get at a place like Microsoft.

I’ll probably wind up marginally better off than if I had gone into FANG, but I don’t think this is a gamble worth taking if your life depends on it.

If you are bored, then it is you that is not stimulating yourself, not your job.

Any job can be fun and stimulating: ask anyone intelligent working in a monotonous job e.g. talk to smart minimum wage friends. The exception would be if your workmates are hell; that is not fun.

Make up some human challenges for yourself, while perhaps avoiding purely technical challenges (my assumption is that you are an engineer type). Try to make colleague X laugh every day, draw a cartoon for colleague Y, whatever, et cetera.

Richard Feynman played the bongos and picked locks.

Jim Keller is off-the-charts smart, yet he talks about the his joy of digging ditches, in and interview of Jim by Lex Fridman: jog to 1h16m40s in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA

Joel Spolsky (old skool!) writes about "My first real job was in a big, industrial bakery" - about 5 paragraphs from top in https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/10/controlling-your-e...

If you are thinking you want to do a startup, the best place to find a founder(s) is in a large company. Search for other colleagues you like working with and that have integrity, and especially pay attention to others with skills you are weak at (e.g. marketing if you are a tech guy). Eventually an opportunity will open itself with a colleague.

Ask others you trust what your weaknesses are, and challenge yourself to improve on those areas.

Finally, be careful of the siren call of money. You don't want to burn through your savings (resetting to zero at 30 was rather unpleasant for me). But also don't waste your precious time only on chasing money (I have also tried that, and while it has given me a certain amount of financial freedom, the journey was mostly unsatisfying).

Disclaimer: I am middle aged, and I myself have done some of the above, and I regret not doing other of the above!

I can't give you a FAANG perspective, but I can relate to your feelings. Creativity and autonomy are extremely important...I would say some of the most important things in life. Money is important, but often in how it affords you time to be creative and autonomous.

My advice to you is to do the old regret thought experiment: consider your choices and imagine that whichever one you choose, it fails spectacularly. With that in mind (that whatever you choose will fail), which choice do you regret the least?

The only way you can really do your own work is if you build the career capital (trust etc.) that is required to do that. If you've got it already, is this worth spending it on, or would it be better to spend it by moving to a place where you can do better work?

If your management has problems, and those problems haven't changed in 2 years, do you think they're going to soon? If they weren't going to change themselves, can you realistically change them? If you can't change them, does it make sense to stay?

The only real thing that matters is impact. Make sure your tasks are aligned to that (otherwise you just hit a promo wall that you're never going to climb over). Forget about everything else. If your tasks aren't aligned to wider impact in a way that leads to personal goals, leave.

The reality is good manager or not, you'll probably get pipped if you coast, or if you push too hard against the assigned work. Especially if you don't have social acumen to match your technical skills. Your perception of loyalty to your team is likely significantly more than the reality of your manager's loyalty towards you.

Don't make the mistake of staying too long. That's career suicide (been there done that a few times). Move on before you think it's the right time. Now is when you have the leverage. Make use of it. 2 years is enough to spend at a place unless you're chasing a decent RSU grant. Tech stocks are quite a bit down compared to 2 years ago, so regardless it's probably a good time to change jobs.

You have some time. When you come into sudden wealth(which is basically the case for big tech compensation), there's a need to "grow into it" and become sufficiently noble to use the resulting freedom to good effect, vs simply inflating your lifestyle and burning out on dull work.

What you want to do before leaving is, in essence, to polish up your diamonds and figure out what kind of investments you're making, in a personal capital sense as well as a financial one. The very biggest problems in the world are not a matter of engineering wisdom, but of social coordination. They are solved not by working on that problem directly but by carefully arranging some pieces of the puzzle - knowledge, tools, collaborators - such that anyone with some brains and energy could come along and realize the last steps by making it their life for a few years.

Now, you can be that person who makes it their life - and that's the startup, essentially - but you can also engage behind the scenes seeding the ideas, connecting the talent and the investments. What any huge, successful company is, is a kind of melting pot of ideas seen but not pursued, because the original mission takes precedence, and status-seeking behavior acts to reinforce that mission. There are actually a lot of people like you who aren't getting quite what they want from the work. Find them. Find out what's hot and worth paying attention to. Keep polishing the skills where you can. There's always a next thing(at least, as long as you're able to work). You don't have to pull any triggers or go against the company's wishes, you just have to prepare.

It sounds like you're in an average FAANG team. You could try switching teams.

Here's why I think you might be in an average team:

>"I have tried over the past 2 years to propose different solutions to hard problems and I just get blown off."

A good team has tough problems, and they need clever solutions. Maybe your team's mandate isn't to solve a tough problem.

>"product managers and “leadership” assign to our team with barely any input on the overall project or ability to propose new projects."

This sounds like you might be in a workhorse/executing engineering team.

You say this:

>"I’m scared to move teams ... because I have a good manager ... and my job isn’t that stressful."

A better manager would be trying to increase the team's scope, and yours. If you're not feeling some stress, your manager isn't growing you. A better manager would create a challenging environment for you where you'd feel like your ass is getting kicked.

There are great FAANG teams, and great FAANG managers. Seek them out! (I'm at Amazon, probably the "A" that didn't make it in your acronym. But if you drop me a note I could introduce you to great managers at Amazon)

I was in FAANG for 5 years and felt similarly at around the 2 year mark. Convinced myself to stay on the same team for another year since I was getting promoted consistently. 2020 helped break the monotony of work since it was in general a very bizarre experience. Transfered internally at around the 3.5 yr mark and that helped keep things fresh for another year or so, but eventually I lost the motivation and had to leave.

Other commenters here have got it right that staying on for a few years and netting a couple of promos will grant you a ton of financial freedom, and the block of FAANG experience on your resume will definitely get you in the door anywhere. I'm now at an earlier stage startup and really enjoying the work, but wouldn't change anything about my path here in retrospect.

Could you explain why your solutions are being blown off? Is it because you're at a top-down environment which doesn't listen to junior engineers as a matter of course? If that's the case, then it's an unusual situation to be in at a FAANG, and you should just move teams. Or are your solutions not appropriate for some reason, or are you not effective at championing them? No shame in this! It's where most of us begin. Selling other people on a good idea is itself a difficult skill, and a necessary one if you want to be promoted more than one more time. So: stay. And think about all the non-technical skills one must learn in any career.

I understand your feelings. I had a very interesting project at my FAANG start, it was fun, required creative and learning new things.

With time I got assigned stuff that wasn’t challenging, and that hit me hard. And also locked in legacy code or big-Corp only way of doing things.

But you have to remember that you have a very good job. Most people would like to work there someday, and it opens many doors.

It’s yours to decide, but I would bet in an internal transfer. If nothing is interesting, starting exploring other options. But big Corp is always like this. The only difference is if you are lucky with your manager and/or project

I’m in my 5th year at a FAANG. For the first 2.5 years I was stuck in a role that felt similar to what you are describing. I had a “good” manager and decent work-life balance but my ideas didn’t get much traction and the org was so big, I felt like just a cog in a wheel. So I transferred internally.

The next team was smaller and I got the opportunity to build something. What I built led to a promotion, which I then leveraged to move to another position with a bigger scope and more freedom to build and implement my ideas. This year I got to propose and start building a multi-million dollar project that will outlast my tenure at the company.

It makes a lot of professional and monetary sense to spend some time at a FAANG. One huge advantage of companies of the FAANG size is they have a massive internal job market. You get to keep vesting your stocks and banking your salary while working on different teams and on different products. Before you know it you’ll be at the end of 4 years and you’ll either be working on something cool or leveraging your experience to get more pay and work on something more interesting elsewhere.

Each group within a big company is different. See if you can find a group in your company that will be a better fit for you.

Timely: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32537042 - raise your aspirations!

(Whatever that means. Or don’t. Apply any and all advice to your situation, don’t just take the advice as stated ;)

> I have tried over the past 2 years to propose different solutions to hard problems and I just get blown off

This is the core of the problem, right? You want to work on interesting things, but you're being prohibited from it. Also it seems a bit like you're being disrespected by them if they're not taking your ideas seriously and dismissing them immediately. If you want to stay (which I think you should), you can wait until you're 40 years old and people start listening to you just because of your age, which might feel unfulfilling. Or you can hack on these ideas on your own time, release them as an open-source project, and try to get the company to use them if the project becomes popular.

First, what are the goals you mention, and if you left your job, what specifically would you do to work toward those goals? Figure that out before you do anything. You may feel creatively stifled now, but once you leave, you may find the "blank canvas problem" is even more stifling.

Finally, a provocation. Starting something new is unbelievably stressful and terrifying—and the odds are against you—but even knowing that, there are some people who can't NOT do it. They don't ask "should I go for it?" Nothing can stop them. Just my opinion, but if you have doubts, you're not ready.

Try changing teams first. You should be able to find something there that appeals to you. You cant work in a single team in one of the largest tech companies in the world and expect it’s the same way throughout the entire company.

Outside of people telling you the obvious, put your head down, keep doing it for a few years and save/invest, have you tried speaking up?

A simple, “Hey, on the next project, can I be involved in the planning? I have some ideas and would love to contribute them.” might go a long way. You say you have a good manager, what did they say? I know it seems like you aren’t getting anywhere but the reality is, you are. Time, is what you’re banking. The more you stay where you are (for a few more years at least) the better it looks on a resume. From there you’ll have all the creative freedom you can handle.

I'd like to add that many studies suggest that the fastest way to increase your income in IT is to job-hopping. E.g., my son has made 3 moves in 3 years from high-end help desk to deveops engineer, at triple his first salary. He has also very deliberately chosen jobs that would provide him with growth opportunities, because he didn't want to be siloed in any one role. None of them were with FANGs, but given all the layoffs in the news, being at a monster company does not guarantee you a job.

You should leave. These companies are built like traps and it's easy to get stuck in them.

It might be hard to see right now but there's a reason these companies get very little respect among repeat builders

It sounds like you want more influence, and sometimes developing relationships and building trust with people in your organization takes more than two years to build, especially in a larger company.

Poor child. FANG is where you go to retire. If you want to actually have an impact on architecture, go work for a startup or small company (<250 employees).

When you can't do something, when it's a real stumper and there's no obvious solution, how does a FAANG engineer tackle the problem? Try that.

Alternately, why do you feel "blown off?" Is that common on your team, or just you? The feelings and also the behaviors leading up to them? Have you talked with your good manager about this? Or, if you manager was actually managing well, did the manager ask you?

Take small bets, explain the value you are attempting to deliver and basically learn how to sell. Especially to skip levels. Be willing to fail.

I’ve been there. The most important asset that you have in this universe is your time. Using the regret minimization framework, take the largest risk that you can possibly tolerate and make every moment meaningful. You sound young. Your risk tolerance will only go down as you age and eventually match that of the FANG. Don’t worry, the FANG will still be there and happily take you back.

I’ve been there. The most valuable asset you have in this universe is time. Using the regret minimization framework, take the largest possible risk you can tolerate while you’re still young. Your risk tolerance will only go down as you age, and at some point will match that of the FANG. Don’t worry, the FANG will still be there, and be happy to take you back.

it might just be that trading your soul for money is not a good deal

If you’re young, take all your chances in your 20s. I started my company when was 23 and it’s provided for me ever since.

I’m in my 30s now and if I had waited until I settled down and had kids I would have been very tempted to make the “safe choice” and missed out on my dream of entrepreneurship.

Atleast, until the kids were out of the house anyways.

Stay the course, and when it cycles you out, or you burn out, you have had made some good money, and then you can go to the other side and join a startup. Both are great experience.

Save up some money, then give your two weeks notice. Don't expect to recover from burnout instantly. It may take months. Consider interviewing for and taking a different job.

Work on something else on the side. Family, projects, relationships, honestly anything that gets you going. Your fang job is just one of many jobs you can have in life.

> have a good manager, a good comp and my job isn’t that stressful

Sounds like you achieved this on the first try. You think it wouldn’t happen again? Why?

Switch teams, be careful about what you choose, can be radically different

I would to feel trapped in FANG ie being able to pay my bills :)

Switch FAANGs, not all of them have the same culture.

how old are you?

Start buying small businesses

Start your own company?

You get paid well to stfu and don't rock the boat.....

Retire early.

Can we please stop calling them FA(A)NG already?

Facebook is now Meta; Google is Alphabet; Netflix is a joke, and not really on par with others; and Microsoft is still there, big and relevant.

At least call them MAAMA, or even better AAMA (Meta is evil and nobody should want to work there).