FAANG vs Startup
How do folks rationalize going from Big Tech to a startup? As far as I can tell, it’s about a 50% pay cut. For a senior person, Big Tech (FAANG) has equity on the order of the base salary. Startups are lower base salary with uncertain equity. The quantity of equity never seems to compensate for the risk. Looking at AngelList, equity for sub 20 person startup is around 0.15-0.3%. Contrast this with with Big Tech pay for senior/staff engineer which can be $200k salary plus $200k/year RSUs (I'm speaking of US West Coast). The startup would have to have an exit in the hundreds of millions for the payoff to be the same. I know that startups can offer more interesting work, impact, and growth. But when evaluating against Big Tech, it’s hard to let go so much of the compensation. I’m interesting in hearing from people who have decisively chosen to give up the comfort and guaranteed money of Big Tech to pursue startup life.
www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/prcwnu/faang_vs_startup/
