How to Exit FAANG?

The thing you want, low stakes low effort programming, doesn’t really exist. The reason Google can survive building everything themselves — and thus giving you and many others endless code to write — is because they have exceptionally deep pockets and army’s of people.

Outside of Google-type companies, people write code to serve a direct business need which means the impressive software engineers are not the people who write good code but rather the software engineers who can use technology to benefit the business — which sometimes means writing code, but often does not.

If you go to a smaller company, even in a software engineering role, even as an individual contributor, expect to spend a lot less time having fun programming and a lot more time solving business problems.

You can absolutely coast in a low stakes environment at a smaller company, but don’t expect that being able to write Google-quality code will impress anyone. At a pragmatic company, people are more impressed by whatever benefits the bottom line. If you’re not a natural at the business side of things, it’ll be much more challenging to impress at a small company than it would be to impress at Google.

Where do you live now? If I had to do this I'd do the following:

- Move to 2nd tier, lower cost of living city. My hidden gem: Chicago. Public transit, plenty of housing, culture, arts, #1 food city in the US, international airport with flights everywhere, half the housing cost and 3/4th other expenses as NYC and SF. 2nd option is Philadelphia for the same reasons and proximity to NYC for the weekend trips or to go into the office.

- Take a pay cut working at a financial, industrial, retail company as a cog while enjoying a stable 9-5. Lots of options remote and local with the resume you have.

- Work on side projects, hobbies. Decompress.

I wouldn't worry about your skills with "real world" tech stacks. It's straight forward to pick up.

Edit: I know calling one of the largest cities in the US a hidden gem is odd, but tech and Chicago / Philly? Not often considered.

"Somewhere where I can put the minimum effort and still impress"

Get a Corporate job in a big old school industry/traditional company (e.g manufacturing) where you are just a number. Trick is to find a team where work is minimal. FAANG and startups are out

2nd best bet is to find a Mid sized small business where they don't have much IT but just about enough where you could become a key IC doing 9-5 with minimal pressure. Tech is not their main business.

Even at a non-FAANG (or even a non-software-focused company for that matter), I've found it very difficult to entertain external options. The security of multiple years in one place is very hard to give away, especially when your team and managers are willing to work with you on things a new place will quickly frown upon.

If one thing was going to get me (and possibly you) to leave, it would be a company of similar standing (how users interact with the product, amount of public users or private clients, type of product) offering the ideal tech stack for me (you).

Good luck though. Very interested in how you proceed if you decide to make a change

PS - sorry not so much advice as a generic "same here"

I left Google in 2018. I was working in Zurich and moved back to Romania. My compensation dropped by ~60%. I don't regret the move at all. There's a lot of cool stuff outside of FAANG and there's lots of cool stuff outside of work.

What is it — specifically - you like about the high comp? Is it a sense of feeling personal security, proof of being valued, the desire to be able to buy expensive things on a whim? It may be easier to give up the money if you really identify what it is doing for you and ask yourself if a) you still need it and if so b) if there is a different way you can meet that need.

I would recommend you consider a government job, in the public service somewhere.

There you will find many people seriously impressed with what your low-effort output can produce -- and the best part is that if you choose the related field carefully, you might be substantially helping the lives of people in your country or local area.

Be it health, agriculture, utilities, or some other field, there's likely to be heaps of problems that technology and modern computing are yet to touch. However, the caveat is that often these organisations and their systems are resilient to change -- that's my friendly way of saying they won't want to buy you a computer that can run python, and if you produce code they might be a bit scared to put it in 'production' somewhere.

But if you're brave and a little persistent, your changes can have a real positive impact, and you'll not be working anywhere near as hard/stressfully as an area that understands technology.

Generally speaking, there is room for a tonne of flexibility in public service for technical experts, because they are rare and valuable.

Leaving behind FAANG compensation will be much more difficult if you take work at a private firm (especially a profitable one), but working for the public you will know your wages are paid by taxation and the contributions of many hard working people -- I think this might help a lot.

suck it up; hoard that cash; buy a 10acre farm out mid west; start youtube channel; enjoy new life.

but seriously if you want to leave FAANG then just leave. there are many things one can do in life and maybe consider software might not be the thing you want to do. like if you didn’t need money and had housing. what would you do?

life is short and i did the sea change now life is so f’ing refreshing. wake up do work on the land. go fishing at night. do some computer stuff to make money but it isn’t my identity anymore.

bush/commune camping with a bunch of hippies i realised that having skills in computers is utterly useless skill in the world vs say knowing how to weld or lead a drum circle. computers are useful for business/making money but like if you wanna be useful in the world… what skills are relevant and in demand? not for money but for trade. go learn that stuff. you may just find your burnout problems magically melt away and a love for computers comes back (or not!)

> I have absolutely no interest in leading a team, but senior members in my org keep trying to groom me into a TL. I like being an IC and building what I'm told to build; I have no idea how to decide what it is we should be building and don't want to deal with customer demands.

Have you considered telling this to these "senior members"? I.e "I want to remain an IC. I don't want to be a TL".

I would say just do it. Towards the start of covid I looked at my employee stock awards program for the first time in a decade and realized I was pretty rich, so I quit. Now I spend my time with my wife and children and I work on the random projects that interest me. It's very low stakes programming, a few hundred stars on github, a bug opened by a random person every few months, and I run a couple websites that see hundreds of visitors a month. Getting into creating TikTok videos as well. I enjoy it.

I don't understand how it's hard to give up the FAANG compensation. Do you want money for the sake of having more money? Personally, I want money to enable me to do things that I want to do in life, which are the things I listed above. Once I had enough I stopped trying to get more.

Meh, just go to a start-up. I went from startups to big tech, including a name that rhymes with "feta", and am back at startups. It's been a compensation roller coaster going from +360% to -68% over 6 years, but I have so much more energy and am making a substantial impact.

There was a big "living below your means" message I was getting from folks when I was graduating 25 years ago, and I think it has really paid off. Finding a comfortable, satisfying lifestyle that can be funded with mid-level comp has been such advantage for my family.

I say that because whereas I work where I want, there are a number of folks I interact with who drag themselves to jobs they hate because they "can't" leave the comp. Sometimes they really have ratcheted up their COL quite high, and other times it is just too much of blow to imagine their salary cut in half. I'll share my experience of a series of paycuts for ever more interesting work, and the satisfaction that resulted, but it usually doesn't seem to resonate.

There is a weird hack about compensation. Move to a place with a much lower cost of living. I'm not talking about suddenly moving to Thailand, you can stay within the US, there are lot of smaller cities that needs tech but their cost of living is much lower.

Basically the math works like this, if your cost of living is 200% US average (San Fran, LA, NYC are there or higher) and you move to a 96% US average your salary might drop 50% but you are still making the same amount of money essentially. In reality it might drop 30% so you will be getting a raise.

Then you can do things like own a house for $100k or less.

Have you tried finding something intrinsically motivating (even if it's higher effort/higher stakes)? I spent two years at USDS after losing all motivation at AWS. I ended up working harder and on more consequential projects, but it really helped me find the joy in programming again.

FWIW, USDS has let a number of senior/staff ICs from companies whose name rhymes with "frugal" do very short stints (3-4 months).

My advice is for you to go talk to a professional therapist.

It's easy, but before you leave, remember: there are very few things in life that matter less than adtech. You will find no shortage of stress and pressure in any field, including ones that pay much less.

First, make sure you don't have too many personal belongings in the office. There's always a chance they'll walk you out of the building on the spot.

Second, tell your manager that you think it's time for a change in your life, and you plan to move on from the company. Your manager probably has an "unregretted attrition" target, so they're unlikely to object to a 2-week notice period if they aren't spiteful.

You will take a big salary hit - make your peace with not owning a downtown penthouse by age 40 - but you probably have enough of a cushion to spend 6-12 months taking stock of your life and goals.

It's not so bad.

You want to exit big tech, but don't want to give up the comp? I think you may have to make a tough choice.

Move to a similar company as an IC - you'll get a change of scenery without giving up the high compensation.

What's NIH?

I took a pay cut to leave the startup world, looking for a job with more or less the performance characteristics you list above. I found a non-profit doing work I thought was worthwhile. I'm proud of what I do, and it's much easier to explain the value to people compared to a nebulous SaaS product. But because they are not primarily a product company, they have not ever had anything like a death march or long period of crunch time, which I really love. Timelines are quarters years rather than weeks. One downside is the compensation is less, but it's still plenty for me. Another downside is that, not being primarily a product company, it can be frustrating dealing with people who don't have a background in the language and processes around making what products we do have.

Just slip out the back jack, make a new plan Stan.

Your google skills are applicable, you’ll just need to squint and cock your head a bit. Most of the industry standard tools are clones of google internal tools so you’ll recognize them. You’ll need to swap some nouns but the concepts are the same.

You don’t need to coast, you need to get their boot off your neck.

Find a startup doing something interesting and apply. If you’re willing to take a risk I’m sure lots of places would be happy to have you.

Out in the real world you’ll find your motivation and vision again.

I moved from one of these FAANG companies to another company known for its Culture and work life balance. Since 2023, things have turned very sour and the culture nor Wlb both don't exist anymore and the paycut isn't worth it without those. I'd rather chose the devil I know then the one I don't in your case. My advice to you is to keep searching for your paradise (Large company but slow growth with research division / small company but heavily technical), but be aware that you may never do (without a paycut) and if you do things can change quickly and you'll have to adapt.

I have many friends in San Diego who work comfortable DOD jobs, have job security, and put in minimal effort. Given most of the pack at those places puts in minimal effort, I gather it should be easy to stand-out and impress if you put in a little more than minimal effort.

Furthermore, these engineers get every second Friday off (common practice at many DOD firms). Just something to consider.

I am at a different FAANG. Before striking out to find a new job at a different company, I think you should at least pursue opportunities at different teams inside "frugal :P". There definitely are teams which have less scope and oftentimes more ambitious engineers pass those teams by since they are looking for a promotion.

I would probably start looking at something in IT, infra, or internal tooling. Even something like compilers or whatever where you can more focus on iterating and improving an existing codebase.

Reduce your workweek to 4 days per week, or even 3.

“Frugal” salary band should allow you to still live a comfortable life. Perhaps you will save a bit less. That’s ok, you want to leave anyway and you will earn less in any other place. You will also become ineligible for future promotions. What do you care, you want to leave anyway.

Now use that extra time to find your next thing. Do interviews, or bootstrap your own thing if that’s what motivates you. Be careful with IP and noncompetes.

I did it a couple of years ago. Just left and accepted a slightly lower compensation in a non-FAANG company, but still a very respectful salary.

Didn't regret it for a moment.

My advice is to just fire some CVs, do some interviews, and see if any of the offers you will eventually get make sense for you, in terms of the ratio of Compensation vs. Responsibility. While you are still employed, you can always refuse offers.

And now it's time to throw this account away. Cya.

>What I feel like I'd really rather do is quit and join a team working on something low stakes. Somewhere where I can put the minimum effort and still impress.

Can you please redo sky.google.com? I want it to have the features of Stellarium Web, with JWST photos, and also include "See a satellite" features.

james.darpinian.com/satellites

This would impress everyone. Good luck on your decision!

Living in a third world country I surely do want problems like these in my life.

Also a controversial opinion. I feel in life where you don't have to worry about the base of Maslows hierarchy ( food, rent, clothing) people start making up non-existent problems out of thin air just to feel human again.

> I like being an IC and building what I'm told to build; I have no idea how to decide what it is we should be building and don't want to deal with customer demands.

To be honest I'm kind of surprised programmers like this work at frugal

> But it's a hard pill to give up the FAANG compensation

Sounds like you need to decide what are your priorities first? I.e. choose between money, time, or anything in between (part time, sabbatical, etc). Then, commit and act.

Find a chill manager on a team that works with or maintains open source software. You can easily find a good position where you are without losing the comp. But stay away from cloud PA.

If you want to put in the minimum effort you’re going to want to stay at big corps.

If you want to be a little IC cog in the machine and build what you’re told, stay at big corps.

Find a university to work for. The money will likely be less, the time off will likely be more, and the working environment will be relaxed.

> Ask HN: How to Exit FAANG?

:qw

Have savings.

I'll throw it out there: You sound stressed and burned out.

... Please talk to someone and get some help.

When and how long was your last vacation?

depression