Comment by jambalaya8
3 months ago
I remember taking pay cuts of 35-65% for a few jobs I thought sounded more cool or less stressful when I was younger, only to find out some of my coworkers were making far more at the same place. They placed me still at or above the median wage, and I learned a lot (I never vested, and stocks weren't a factor in the jobs).
In my personal experience, the jobs I have taken which paid less treated me as cheaper and more disposable. This is not to say all companies are like this, and indeed many do value tech employees they could not afford otherwise more, but making a blanket statement about any pay figure is sort of a bad idea.
The FAANG workplace environment is something you will pay for. There are reasons it pays well, and I never really understood this until I left. I do not mean merely 'doing your job'.
As for the last part of your reply, I am guessing it was meant to get reactionary replies (touché).
“ In my personal experience, the jobs I have taken which paid less treated me as cheaper and more disposable. ”
That’s my experience. The more I have made in my career, the better and with more respect I got treated. As freelance I did some projects with non profit “do gooders”. They didn’t pay well and treated people horribly. On the other hand, successful companies will treat you well and pay well.
I worked for all kinds of companies. They all treated me as a disposable resource. There is no difference beyond the amount of money they pay me. This is in Scandinavia so that might be different from what you experience in your part of our world.
Is it possible that the causation is the other way? FAANG doesn't pay well because its dispiriting and toxic, its toxic because it pays well. This attracts all sorts of behavior.
I mean, it paid well in the early-mid 2010s also and was way less toxic.
Out of curiosity, what has changed over time that has made it more toxic? I left Google in 2015.
It certainly had its share of toxic traits, but it was at the "what place doesn't?" level.
My feeling was multiple generations of optimizing for promo packets had made the entire culture cynical at G and Amazon. It's one thing when people give lip service to the right things but sometimes the wrong things are rewarded. It hits another level when leaders are actively coaching and advocating cynicism. Throw in layoff fear on top of that and now it's a political mess.
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Perhaps you just didn't push it far enough: I took a 90% pay cut and am happy with it :)
The happiest a was when our entire team was laid off and my whole balance was 10k dollars and I went on to live off that from r a year and a half in Thailand.
That must have been a long time ago.
When I lived abroad and was going for cheap, since I was so damned burnt out, most of the people who did not manage to totally convince locals to treat them like a local paid way more for things like rent (though still very cheap by American standards). I mean, you could find cheaper places, but I wouldn't expect not to pay for it in other ways. I mean unless you were just sort of roaming around, couch surfing (easier a couple decades ago, before AirB&B got so popular probably).
The most I could imagine ten thousand lasting, even scrounging, anywhere I lived, was probably around half a year at most (much less if rent was not factored in, or if you are sharing a place of course; I was not). That'd mostly include parts of Asia, and Central America. And most places like that, connectivity came at sort of a premium price. The internet between a vps in the states and southeast asia was damn slow fifteen years ago.
Couldn't have been too fun when that ten thou ran out. I would never have left the country with no modicum of a guarantee of income upon returning. Gutsy move.
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