>> Just a heads up to anybody super starry-eyed about fang, I worked 10+ years non-fang, and tried fang, and it was absolutely miserable, one of my least favorite jobs of my career.

Most people I know say the same, but they stay. You can be at a non-FAANG and work for half the pay (and often be just as miserable) or you can work at FAANG, own a house, not worry about money, and often do not much work. Misery is part of the package.

> Misery is part of the package.

But isn't that a bug? It's not that hard to find a non-FAANG job that pays well, lets you own a house, and not worry about money without having every working day be a misery.

> own a house, not worry about money

While you absolutely take a huge pay cut to not work at a FAANG, it's not like making 200k+ is living in poverty.

Typically non-FAANG also has other perks: many more fully remote options, typically much more chill about working hours, working with niche tech stacks or on new problem spaces, etc.

You can enjoy work and still have a house and not have to worry about money at a non-FAANG, just not as aggressively much as you do at one.

In Canada, where do you find these non-FAANG 200k+ jobs?

Working for a US based startup (and there are still plenty of good Canadian ones as well)?

I've had Canadian coworkers at multiple companies where Senior Engineers made 200k+

On the other hand they don't need to warn away their family and friends from the products they develop so there is that.

The stressfulness of the interview tends to be correlated with the stressfulness of the job.

The FAANG, or MANGA, all vary a ton. It really doesn't make sense to compare them all as if they're remotely the same. They all have a similar hiring process and they're all big (which does wind up causing similar problems), and the similarities usually end there. Even between teams in these companies things can be totally different.

TL;DR don't throw out a basket of companies because you think they're the same

Yeah not necessarily, but also I don't really see how I could have known what a bad experience fang was gonna be other than trying it myself. People on the inside usually like to pretend they love it (I think so that they can feel 'lucky' to be there) but unless you're on blind or something you aren't gonna know some red flags.

In my case, the place I worked it was like your performance reviews-cycle was something you think about every week of the year. At the startups I've worked for you can think about performance review for a few hours a year -- you'd never not build the exactly what the company needs for perf-review reasons. But it's not like anybody was gonna tell me that in the interview.

Personally I'm not going to try to work at any more fang companies because I just don't think it's worth the risk of going through that again.

Yes, identical story here. I was over the moon when I got the job. Within 6 months was basically just waiting until I had been there long enough that leaving wouldn't look bad.

Not that I know, but in my experience, the stress for me came from the increased level of expectations at faang vs non-faang. I recently moved to a faang-tier company and the most jarring thing to me was how much the expectations around the quality of what I produced grew. Not just in terms of code but like artifacts, documents, and discussions that needed to happen. Another aspect is how overwhelming a large organization can be for people. Going from a 10-50 person startup to an engineering org of 5k people is pretty different. The sheer scale can be stressful in and of itself as you try to figure out what's important to your section of the org.

Not saying non-faang can't have that stress, more just that sometimes the expectations are drastically different and that can feel like a sink or swim thing for people. I'd also say it depends on where you get placed in a faang company, some teams are more dynamic and free wheeling than others which I'm sure plays into it.

Speaking from experience working at both FAANG and non-FAANG, the worst part about FAANG is that compared to small-mid sized companies the work just isn't that interesting.