I see "Big 4" on r/cscareerquestions a lot. It seems to have been invented by that sub as some kind of mythical club of golden programmer employers.

It came from accounting/consulting where there are four really big consulting giants: (KPMG, Earnst & Young, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and Deloitte). Interestingly enough, the above aren't known for being particularly nice employers.

On the sub the inclusion in the "big four" varies a bit, Google is the only one who's always in it. Others sometimes included are Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Adobe.

I honestly never hear anything about Adobe. MS seems strikingly average and Twitter seems like a place I wouldn't want to work.

Usually when I hear it people are talking about Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon [1], but in the last couple years it seems like Microsoft is getting back in gear.

[1] http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-sanity-check/schmidt-c...

I assumed he was talking about accounting firms: PWC, EY, Deloitte, & KPMG.

Me too - and that was the first hit on wikipedia as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Four_%28audit_firms%29

However, if we look at the disambiguation, we find at the bottom of the subsection:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Four#Companies

"Big Four, the most influential international technology companies Amazon.com, Apple Inc, Facebook and Google".

So I'd say it's pretty ambiguous.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft originally (Or Apple instead of MS depends on who you ask) but this usually also included companies that are very competitive and pay a huge salary package, e.g. Apple, LinkedIn, Netflix, even Twitter although it is far from the same market cap as the others in the list. So I mean "top tech companies", sorry for the confusion!

FANG = FB, AMZN, NFLX, GOOG

Pricewater Coopers, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG