
Ask HN: What companies pay starting salaries similar to FAANG but aren't FAANG? - tomazio
I&#x27;ve read a good amount of threads in the last couple months saying getting hired by one of the FAANG companies will get you the best compensation package for an entry level position, while simultaneously seeing many people saying working at one of the FAANG companies isn&#x27;t all it&#x27;s made out to be and some people even saying it made them worse off. So my question is are there even companies that pay compensation levels similar to that of FAANG companies for entry level positions? And if so what companies are they?
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chollida1
Well if you look at how you get compensated at a FAANG company you get

\- salary

\- bonus

\- equity(in the form of restricted shares)

Note that the last one is often the kicker that can make you money. if your
company does well this last component can dwarf all the others.

So maybe start by looking at who compensates in the same manner:

\- Hedge Funds

\- Bulge Bracket firms on Wall Street

\- Lower status tech companies (your Twitter, Dropbox, etc), note, not
intending to insult these companies, just pointing out that they aren't as
desirable places to work as FAANG's.

\- ICO funded companies. They have sooooo much money and they'll spend it all.

If you want to h ave a comfortable retirement then diversify your portfolio.

If you want to be wealthy then you usually have to concentrate. Look at all
the wealthy people you know, almost all will have earned their wealth from a
single source. They tend to diversify later on in life.

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LyndsySimon
> Look at all the wealthy people you know, almost all will have earned their
> wealth from a single source. They tend to diversify later on in life.

I think this might be reflective of "the bubble". I live in a pretty rural
area, and all of the wealthy people I know got there by either being
successful in a family business - usually livestock - or by diversifying once
they got to ~$150k / year in 2018 money. Most of them have several rental
properties and either a small business of their own or have invested in
multiple small businesses in the area.

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chollida1
Farms, small businesses and real estate examples are examples of concentration
to make wealth and not diversification.

So it sounds like you agree with me.

What am I missing?

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mipmap04
I think you'd be hard-pressed to find those jobs as they would be exceedingly
rare. FAANG companies can typically offer those salaries because they have the
pipeline / structure to make new developers valuable and have the bankroll to
support those salaries while you learn. Smaller companies without as much cash
can't make that sort of investment.

If those sort of jobs exist for new hires, and I'm not sure they do for new
grads, they'd most likely be small, extremely well-funded startups and they
would be looking for a very specific skillset to drive value quickly (and
typically a new grad wouldn't have those kinds of skills).

My two cents. I'm a decade past the new grad hustle and I haven't really kept
my ear close to the ground, but I haven't heard of anything like what you are
seeking.

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grigjd3
Oath attempts to be competitive in pay. The problem you're hearing is that no
job is going to be perfect. Working at Google isn't all it's made out to be
because of course it's not. They'd have you believe that the moment you step
foot as a new hire at Google, your life will be filled with purpose, you'll
become more fit, and you're given a free ticket to heaven. Of course that's
ridiculous because no job does that for you. You make your own life and find
happiness by creating your own purpose. A company can never provide that for
you.

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autotune
Blockchain startups, consulting companies, law tech, hedge funds, plenty more
around the Bay Area. Don't just focus on compensation though, focus on which
one will help you gain the most future proof experience while being able to
comfortably afford the area. Personally I've never considered FAANG as a
realistic option due to insane competition and strong lack of desire to do
competitive programming, and am doing perfectly fine along the career track.

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deanmoriarty
I got some pretty high offers from hedge funds (slightly higher than FAANG) on
the east coast for a software engineer position working in infrastructure.
Granted, half of the compensation was rolled in the annual "performance
bonus", but that's how that industry works, they typically don't give equity
away.

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sprobertson
(For anyone else clueless about this acronym:) FAANG = Facebook, Amazon,
Apple, Netflix, & Google.

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marssaxman
One of these things is not like the others... and where's Microsoft?

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everdev
I'm sure Twitter and GitHub are close, plus any other funded, growing tech
company with HQ in the bay area.

Established companies like IBM, Cisco, etc. probably won't be close. You're
looking for companies that are relatively recently founded and funded.

