I usually use FAAMG instead of FAANG because I don't understand what Netflix is doing in there.

Netflix is large enough and pays well enough that it frequently poaches developers from the others on the list. And they poach from it back.

Depending on what you're discussing when you're listing those companies, it may make sense to include them.

Lol good on you for not just dropping the N, but there's actually a person who coined this, and he coined 'FANG' to describe a set of stocks that at the time were appreciating very quickly. Netflix was both the smallest and the first to slow of that group, so that's why they now seem out of place.

>I usually use FAAMG instead of FAANG because I don't understand what Netflix is doing in there.

FAANG is about the pay, not the prestige of the company. They pay so far above the rest of the market that they are really only competing for talent with themselves. Average total comp at Netflix is well north of $500k for an individual contributor.

Then does Amazon belong there? I didn’t get the impression it’s at the level of the others, but closer to Microsoft.

Amazon is lower than Google, FB, and Netflix, but still quite a bit higher than MS. According to levels.fyi for engineers all at the same level (~5ish YOE):

- MS: $185k

- Amazon: $230k

- Google: $267k

This is the middle to lower end of Amazon L5 comp for an SDE. I don’t know about the other companies - it might be mid to lower end for them as well or maybe high end depending on where they hire at.

Don't think those MS numbers are accurate, esp. once you throw in GitHub and LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is definitely higher (dunno about GitHub), but in almost every discussion I've seen about comps, LinkedIn is always talked about separately from MS. On levels.fyi, for example, LinkedIn is in it's own section separate from MS.

Lower than Microsoft prestige-wise.

Highly debatable. While Amazon is more likely to be on the shit-list of Joe Public, in technical circles it comes down to AWS vs MS. Frankly if MS hadn't bought GitHub to distract magpie developers, there would be no contest.

Amazon has the lowest hiring bar because of high turnover. AWS vs Azure is besides the point.

Having worked for both, I would dispute the hiring bar point - but I'm sure it is team dependent.

I’ve been curious about this. Is there a list of companies that pay way and above outside of FAANMG?

I work for a large media company as at Sr director level equivalent engineer. The pay is certainly not north of 500k

Who pays more than FANG outside of FANG?

In the U.S., financial services shops that figured out tech is money. Or, rather, that time is money and tech shrinks time. Think banks’ trading groups, hedge funds, etc.

Along with those, a larger sector of FS bitten with the transformation bug. Even in the non trading related financial services, if a company’s emphasis is on figuring out how to tech before getting eaten by challengers or juggernauts, the pay may indicate how existential the need.

On the other hand, many in the financial industrial complex haven’t realized this yet, and are still trying to “take costs out”, doing reductions in force of knowledgable workers, offshoring any roles not understood by the executives, etc., or paying bottom dollar domestically for coders and IT support, rather than well enough for software or systems engineers.

Large companies are likely to have a mix of these models all at the same time, so understand what type of group you’re looking at.

Also note that financial titles are often inverse ranks of engineering titles, with SVPs below directors and VPs as the junior-most roles.

Note(1): Pro-employee compensation disclosure laws are starting to get passed where (a) you don’t have to say what you used to earn, and (b) a company may have to disclose the comp for your role and similar roles the moment you ask, not after you make it to offer. Check the laws governing both your zip code and the company’s and know your rights to help even out information asymmetry.

Note(2): Performance multipliers are worth paying for. Automation is worth paying for. Anything thought through and written once to do work, that then does that work many times in less time, or for many people in less time, or both, is worth paying for. FANG code runs at staggering scale. FS code makes staggering money in milliseconds. Look for places where each line of code is multiplying output — how many fold drives how much that code, and its engineers, should be worth.

https://www.levels.fyi/2020/ is a decent resource. The numbers are fairly accurate, IME. You can also lurk around Blind if you want to get a sense of salaries in tech (warning though: Blind is completely obsessed with salaries, to the point where its unhealthy).

You'll actually notice that none of the FAANG are on the top 10 of that list. FAANGs definitely pay well, but these days "FAANG" is outdated, IMO. I've seen it "FAANGMULA" sometimes (FAANG + Microsoft, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb) but even that still leaves out other high payers like Stripe, Box, Bytedance, etc.

I would think that Microsoft and Amazon only seem quite a bit lower because of the lower cost of living in Seattle right? Also though taking a looks at levels.fyi salary information none of the FAANG companies are really included in the top paying list.

It sounds way better in conversation.

My tongue-in-cheek definition of FAAN(M)G is "does the company have sufficient resources and technical wits to have entire team(s) dedicated to stress-testing and breaking their internal systems proactively to ensure uptime and low latency?" Netflix with Chaos Monkey definitely applies, and Microsoft does as well. Arguably Salesforce would be there too, if not for their meme-worthy historical failure at the low-latency part.

Could you elaborate on the low-latency part and the historical failure? I don't know a lot about Salesforce, so I'm not quite sure how they fit into FAANG.

People underestimate how hard it is to do streaming that well.

Has to do with blue chip tech stocks apparently

When Jim Cramer coined it (originally as FANG) and began pumping it on his show regularly, it was just a batch of large, sector dominant tech stocks he thought should be bought at that time (with the letter ordering being convenient for memory). That's all it was. There is no greater definition, and it's bizarre to see people argue over that aspect routinely on HN, given it was nothing more than a stock pumping promotion by a slightly vacuous tv bobblehead.

Yeah it's literally just a short list of companies that people see as being the big kahunas of the tech industry. In the '80s it would've been Intel, Microsoft, IBM, and maybe even companies like Lotus or WordPerfect. In the '90s it would've been more like, Intel, Microsoft, AOL, Sun, maybe Oracle, maybe still IBM? Hell maybe even Ebay. Lots of those companies are still around but the ones that are tend to be more mature, less volatile, and less influential on the rest of the industry now, and get correspondingly less press.

But yeah, that's all FAANG is and I'm amazed anyone thinks it's anything more standardized or meaningful or precisely defined. It's shorthand for the biggest and most influential companies in the tech industry at the moment, at least from the perspective of people on the outside looking in. If someone wants to the throw an M into FAANG I totally get it.

all else equal they pay more than the other 4 so yeah i get it

Using all the bandwidth on the interwebs.

Seems like MS has imposter syndrome.

I think as of late FAAMG is more popular or appropriate than FAANG, but I mean, who knows.

According to Wikipedia at least https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Tech

Edit: Not popular maybe, but appropriate still.

I always thought it was more appropriate for most purposes. But on HN, perhaps the most common purpose is discussing ludicrous total comp. And, at least when I left in 2010, Microsoft most certainly did not offer that. I heard that they raised pay across the board shortly after I left, but considering where they started, I’d be shocked if it put them on par with FAANG. Anybody know?

It’s a dog whistle for fellow prestige whores and status collectors. Literally nobody cares what megacorp buys your time from you. I’d posit that if you’re optimizing for comp and stock options you’re either a well-balanced person with priorities outside your career, or the complete opposite – obsessed with chasing status symbols and a myopic idea of success.

Is it better to aspire for balance by chasing both, or neither? After all, what is status if you have no-one to brag to - and what good is having a lot of free time when you are just going to end up dead either way, and with work being the best chance most of us get at making a mark on the world.

Not meant as a snide/flippant remark; this shit is what keeps me up at night.

What was the Steve Jobs quote? Something like “if you look in the mirror in the morning and you’re not excited about what you’re doing that day, go do something else.”

Or the Bezos quote about “imagining myself 80 on a rocking chair – will I regret not doing this?”

As a young adult mostly lacking in wisdom of my own, I’ve found myself coming back to these quotes time and time again. Their philosophy is sound.

If you don’t want balance, then you should go all in. In general, people should take more risk. This is especially true in tech where the downside is often vastly overstated – even if you fail completely, you can get a new job in two days.

My advice to anyone at FAANG feeling unfulfilled is to quit and take a risk to do something awesome. Even if you fail you’ll still grow more than you would working for a megacorp with a recruiting funnel that intrinsically selects for conformists and rule followers.

I don’t really know, but I’m under the impression that Amazon comp is pretty comparable to Microsoft these days.

I think AMZN stock value increases pushes Amazon comp well past Microsoft

Both MS and AMZN have increased comparable amounts in value.

levels.fyi has MSFT at ~75% of GAAF salaries for equal positions (N is apparently exclusively Seniors getting a cool half mil in pure salary and nothing else? Not sure how accurate that is...)

That being said, it's hard to compare directly. I know many M folks, and some F, G, A and A folks. The M folks probably work at most 75% of the hours of the others. I for one would much rather work a standard 9-5 and make a lot than work 996 (not that extreme, but kinda) and make downright absurd amounts...

Amazon seems pretty comparable to MS, not sure where you are looking.

levels.fyi has LinkedIn broken out from MSFT even though it’s wholly owned by them. And LI levels seem comparable to FANG. Also GitHub is a subsidiary of MSFT that seems to pay better than the parent company.

Can we put an R in there too? Does Redit count!? Did you know that modern farming is very high tech?

People probably should. If the acronym includes Netflix, it definitely needs to include MS, they’re way bigger.

The acronym was coined in 2013, when Microsoft arguably looked on track to be the next IBM (the year after, Ballmer departed and their turnaround started). So it kind of made sense at the time, maybe? It’s a bit odd now, granted.

Microsoft wasn't historically an "internet company".

They were an OS only, non-internet company, compared to the rest. When the acronym was created, it was still that way.

Even now, they make most of their butter from OS installs, although yes, they have branched out a lot.

They were, though now I feel Microsoft is actually a more diversified tech company than the FAANGs. Consumer software and hardware, enterprise software, cloud / Internet, gaming, open source (github, etc.)

Micorosft has alwyas been the hyper diversified tech company, they could lose an entire segments of their market and still truck along

The acroynm is based purely on stock performance during the time it was created. You could make the same argument for Apple but Apple was on the list from day 1.

Apparently jim cramer invented the term and AAPL wasn't on the list in 2013: https://www.cnbc.com/id/100436754

And I think this supplanted the earlier "four horsemen" terminology.

Originally: Intel, Cisco, Microsoft, Dell

Then (in 2007): Apple, Research in Motion (Blackberry), Google, Amazon

I think there's more nuance here, for example, Microsoft never succeeded in disrupting anyone but itself.

Others were major market movers and shakers.

Netflix wasn't historically an "internet company" either.

What do you think the "Net" in "Netflix" stands for?

I still think that the acronym should be "FN MAGA". Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon are the big-4 companies, with notably larger market caps than Facebook and Netflix, and those 4 are more broad platforms/conglomerates while Facebook and Netflix are closely associated with a single app or small set of apps.

Facebook has grown into a lot of the things. It probably deserves to be grouped with the others. I honestly thing FAANG became the acronym because these companies were making big waves simultaneously at one point, and the acronym is attractive.

There’s never been any good reason not to include Microsoft except that for a long time it was considered old and stodgy.

Netflix doesn’t make sense in terms of market cap, and it also doesn’t make sense in 2021 when it’s more a media company than a technology company. Don’t get me wrong, they totally nailed it on a ton of tech fronts, and deserve their technical accolades…it just looks strange next to the others.

Oh, thinking about Netflix, I just figured it out. It’s about SWE salaries, and not really related to much else.

…although if that’s it, then Amazon doesn’t really deserve it’s spot any more than Microsoft.

Netflix is fairly comparable to Disney in terms of business model and market cap.

Which isn't bad -- I assume Disney also has a number of highly-paid SWEs -- but for me the difference between FAAMG and Netflix is that (as far as I can tell) Netflix doesn't employee a giant pile of SWEs doing blue sky research / doomed projects only tangentially related to the core business.

Great comparison, Disney v Netflix. It’s actually remarkable to me how close to Disney that Netflix is, considering the considerable IP that Disney now owns and how otherwise comparable they are.

I think it’s because Microsoft’s market cap was stagnant for the entirety of Ballmer’s tenure as CEO.

It’s more like Facebook Apple Google Microsoft Amazon Netflix

good to be inclusive on this one.

I'm going to archive this subthread for the next time someone asks me what "bikeshedding" is.

I don't really care, other than to hint to the author that they're giving away more info than is being shared. Did not expect a million replies =)

If we're actually gonna do this, can we at least rearrange and make it "MAFANG"?

Agreed. We don’t need another MAGA

Definitely not. This is literally the first time I’ve even seen FAAMNG.

First time I've seen it too, but I find it more fitting actually. I see Microsoft as a lot more of a tech giant than Netflix, but maybe Im judging by the wrong criteria.

You aren’t, MSFT is much more appropriate than Netflix, a company that releases 2nd rate copies of shows from better networks.

Same. Sup, faam.

I do

because I wouldn't put video streaming service among tech behemoths that create operating systems, compilers, programming languages, databases, put shitton into ML research and many, many other

I'm not saying that video streaming is easy, but I believe any of those could do it easily from technical standpoint.

Google, Facebook and Amazon already do, idk about Apple and MS.

AppleTV+? Microsoft Stream?

Oh, I forgot about AppleTV, but honestly I've never heard about Microsoft Stream

I dunno about Microsoft Stream, but they've done game streaming with Xbox.

GP listed six companies instead of identifying their employer. If they do work at Microsoft, it's cruel of you to out them. If they don't work at Microsoft, it makes sense that they'd want to list more companies rather than fewer.

Plenty of discussions and comments from the people who originally coined the term FANG / FAANG why they would want to update the term today.

Never heard of FAAMNG though.

FAGMA or FAAM have been suggested as updated terms in light of the metrics / characteristics that initially led to the term FA(A)NG being coined.

These terms were certainly not originally intended to describe high salaries for engineers ;)

I've seen people on 4chan /g/ include the M, but it being 4chan, they rearrange the acronym into something offensive that I shan't repeat.

Can we get a hint?

It's the one higher up this comment thread.

I enjoyed

FAANGMULA

and

TARANTULAS

fun meme

There are also a handful of sub $100bn marketcap publicly traded tech companies that pay on par of FAANGs and may have more enticing vesting schedules too. Greater upside as well.

Would love to hear about some of those companies

Pinterest, Lyft, Uber to name a few

Salesforce has done well for me up until the last two weeks. Oracle isn't dead yet. Adobe, Nvidia and Qualcomm are also all doing well at a 30 foot view. None of those have made as much money for me as Cleveland-cliffs, though.

Lmao, had the same thought.

Also, did you get a lot of those participation trophies when you were a kid? I read a take on those recently, along the lines of, "if the adults always praise everyone, then their praise is meaningless and can't be trusted". Ie, a recipe for impostor syndrome in later life. I certainly experience that. Anytime I participate in an activity that I'm naturally talented at, I figure it's just not that difficult and I've done nothing special.

Participation trophies weren't a big thing for GenX or Millennials, according to Google's N-gram Viewer, showing up instead for Boomers and Zoomers (and the Silent Generation).

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=participation+...

Did OP mention their age? I assumed, without any other info to go with, that they're about the same age as me - 30's and millennial. And my cohort got participation medals for every goddam thing you could think of. Looking at the 6th place ribbon winner of the third grade spoon race right here.

Not to pick nits or anything!

Yeah, I assumed they were Microsoft because I’ve never heard FAAMNG before

LOL. Without revealing any further, I'm not at M ;)

OUTED!

what is MS?

When I'm on E2EE I only use that acronym. And I've worked for one of the companies and had IP stolen by two others. Maybe that's why...

Well, aren’t you just the edgiest.

Remember: E2EE on phones is not secret.

and it suddenly is if it's on PCs?

It also reflects the casual homophobia of the relevant communities. (It’s one thing to laugh at the silly acronym, but another to use it as a way of deprecating the companies in question.)

Weird how you went there, I think of the faces and then inevitably of the 3 Ninjas scene where multiple elements bound together are stronger than when alone

I've seen that as FANGMAN - adding NVidia to the mix.

I never considered it before, but the image of a man with fangs that slowly sucks the life out of you also might fit, depending on your PoV.

IMO Qualcomm can be far worse than NVidia but I don't know where you would put a "Q."

yes, it's FAAMG not FAANG. Used to work at G and I always correct people this way.