HN is always saying that working for a FAANG is better money than working for a startup even if it IPOs, so my question to you is: How did your employees make out during the IPO? Is the prevailing HN wisdom correct? Did your average developer employee that stuck it through with you on your journey end up with more or less than what they would have made working at FAANG?
I'm going to try to answer the question without divulging how anyone individually did.
I took a look at the initial 4 year option grants for the first 10 engineers (this doesn't count refreshers or other follow on grants). The average value at $50/share (yesterday's opening price) is just over $10M. The group varied in experience from just out of school to a few years working when they joined. I feel we were a good deal more generous than the median company: https://amplitude.com/blog/employee-equity-is-broken-heres-o...
Someone on the FAANG side can figure out what the apples to apples comparison is. There's no question that in 90% of cases FAANG compensation is way better. If you are optimizing for how to make the most money over a few years you should absolutely choose FAANG. The real benefit of startups comes from other forms. If you asked that group of 10 I think they'd respond that being an early engineer at a start that IPOs gives you way more career capital and long term earning potential than FAANG.
To be clear, it's the first 10 engineers, a very different group from the first 10 employees.
No question that the economics of FAANG is way better than an average YC company. That's an easy one. I don't have the data, but the economic outcome is easily 2-5x, maybe more.
Following cohorts of engineers are a fraction of what I outlined so the economics are different. It's too hard for me to do the work to get an exact calculation, but probably the next cohort of 10 engineers is something like 1/2 that, and then subsequent ones are down to 1/3 or 1/4. They're joining years later and so taking on much less risk at that point.
To put things in perspective, in 1999 I joined a company that ipo’ed in 1997. The company’s first admin assistant made enough from the ipo to buy a vineyard in Napa valley. I was employee 40 at a YC company and after exit I made 5 figures whereas the founders made high 8 figures. YC definitely teaches the founders to keep a higher percentage of equity for themselves and distribute less to employees.
startups aren’t a game of averages. the averages are definitely worse than the FAANGs. choosing well (and getting lucky) are paths to “definitely better.”
It also depends on what your professional goals are (growth, leadership, impact, fun, next opportunities) assuming they are not only monetary.
>If you want to get rich, your best bet on a risk-adjusted basis is to join a profitable and growing public company. Google for short. Make $200-500k all-in a year, work hard and move up a level every 3-5 years, sell options as they vest (in case you joined Enron), and retire at 60, rich. This plan works every time.
For the actual top tier of compensation in tech (out of FAANG only Netflix is a part of that band) I think it still is. This year I've seen multiple engineers get ~500k offers for 4-6 yoe with no particular specialty, just general competence.
High end of Staff appears bumping into the million dollar range once bonuses come around at some of these places.
Sorry, is the claim here that there are a "decent amount" of fresh grads who get promoted 3 times in 2.5 years to reach Staff (E6) at FB? That doesn't pass the smell test. "Has happened at least once in the history of the company", maybe. "Happens frequently enough to use as a meaningful benchmark", no.
At this point I don’t understand what’s being argued about. Are you saying you have anecdotes that this happens? Yeah, probably. I have some, too.
Are you saying the median total comp for a 7-year total experience Facebook engineer is $1m? If so, what’s your source? (Or what are you claiming? The top decile? The top quartile? Etc.)
I think there are more than a few anectodes. This is not true for google but fb promotes engineers really fast from 3-5 and 6.
3-5 if you don't get promoted after a year and a half or something they mark your packet expectation is you go from 3-5 very quick on average and even faster at the tail.
I did 3-7 in 6 years at Google and it was the fastest in the larger org with >500 people. You can do 4.5 at fb easy.
And yes at fb 7 years would rack lots of engineers 1+ m, even assuming modest gains.
If you don't believe it, it's your choice but not all companies treat employees as average. Google optimizes for average, fb rewards high performers...
Like I said, it's not a quantifiable statement, so I don't believe it or not believe it. If you're saying that FB promotes people faster, yes, I can believe that--younger companies generally tend to.
I am quite skeptical that the median time for a new-grad hire to get to L7 at FB is 7 years or fewer, but I guess this is something that we could answer with some weekend scraping of LinkedIn. ;)
Doesn’t this depend on yoe? Startups could certainly match faangs for early career engineers but the more experienced folks are likely going to get unmatchable offers.
Not everyone cares about the money though. After a certain point you get tired of politics and process and just want to build things. A successful startup culture seems like a win win.
So a slightly different take on this question is what is the highest "employee #" you would want to be under to make more money (in total including comp and level growth) than as a FAANG engineer over the last 9 years?
PS: Definitely a huge congrats on this journey and outcome.
HN is always saying that working for a FAANG is better money than working for a startup even if it IPOs, so my question to you is: How did your employees make out during the IPO? Is the prevailing HN wisdom correct? Did your average developer employee that stuck it through with you on your journey end up with more or less than what they would have made working at FAANG?