Why Do Software Engineers Leave FAANG?

It's no secret that many software engineers want to work at FAANG (Facebook/Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google). It's also well known that many FAANG software developers leave after just a couple of years. So, why do so many software engineers leave FAANG?

[avinashkr]

To leave a FANG, first you have to land there.. this process is very crucial

[hoyinli]

1. Higher pay
2. Start their own business
3. Get promoted
4. Want to work on something new
5. They don’t like their company

(please like the video after reading this message)

[zioping]

6th reason for leaving faang is to make a youtube video named "Why I Left Google/Facebook" lol

[BrianBeeby]

I can understand #2 being very common. Get into FAANG, work for a little while, then leave with enough savings to start your own hustle. Plus, you'll have the street cred and be able to return to FAANG or go to similar high-caliber computer/software engineering jobs. I'm just going for self-employment directly.

[gopalakrishnan]

I think #5 is more common than you think. At one point in time, at-least if you want to grow technically as an engineer, FAANG sometimes offers very little. Lots of stuff are inbuilt and engineers don't actually code as much as you think. There is definitely a lot of decision making but from my experience I have seen stakeholder management, cross-team collaboration take the most time. You really have to spend a lot of effort in communicating and convincing others than actually building the product.

The change might be as simple as a two liners, but you are making the change in a codebase that serves millions of customers. Even though the change may seem easy, there are so many processes and barriers that you may have to overcome.

The above can make you really feel like a cog in the wheel and easily replaceable. You just replace the SDE with another SDE who can simply follow the process and get the job done. So to really make an impact, you have to be an excellent communicator, and actively see to strengthen and improve the existing processes, it starts to become more of a managerial role than an engineer role. hence I can understand the people who tend to leave for better opportunities, once they have enough experience working at a big company.

[hovardlee]

This is why I was leaving different companies in Polish market: to get promoted, to earn more, to free from toxic boss, to be involved in something more inspiring, to get rid of boring assignments :)
This is how it works all over the world. Not only FANG because when you start from junior dev then after 2-3 years you are underpaid. Even if you are promoted then it is like 10% salary increase when in different company this is 50%.

[slhermit]

Without doing any coding interview, without studying for weeks, without much experience, and with networking,
i got very well-paying (~105k base) job in the MidWest in tech. I did not even ask for 105k.
I asked around 90k.
All I did was communicating well during the interview and showed my interest for learning.
I am not a CS or even engineering major. I just took few CS and Statistics classes and worked on avoiding the rat race.

[georgey]

A mix of #3 and #4 was the reason I left my job. It wasn't at FAANG, but it was a large organization (government department). The job was well-paid and secure, but the project I was working on got really stale, and I wanted to work in a different tech stack, plus some other reasons I won't go into. There was no real prospect of promotion or working on anything that delivered great value to anyone. The choice was to either stay and rot, or move elsewhere and work on something that challenged me and that people valued. Some people value meaningful work over pay and job security. I am one of those people.

[Jure]

I think it depends on your family status. If you are married and have children, you need to give everyone education, feed and dress everyone, get a larger house in a more beautiful and secure place, get a better vacation tour, say a good sea tour, and ultimately help your every child to have their own houses and save some money in case you need for medical purposes and/or support your parents, etc., you will really need a very well paid job, and stable one, so you will be confident in your future. You just cant be confident in a startup company for obvious reasons. So your real choice will be jumping from and to fang. And btw you haven't told how many oldies are there at fang? Do they have like some sort of an age limit?

[rghvraman]

These are the reason why anyone would ever leave a tech job. Not just Faang

[PoojaDutt]

I feel like there’s also something to be said for new grads growing up in a climate where they want to do something more “meaningful” with their lives (collectivism vs individualism), whereas FAANG is stereotypically beneficial to the individual? I’m guessing it’s all about perception - I work at a Big Tech company and love it, but can totally see the reasoning for leaving sooner for some people.

[shubh]

It's the human nature, to want more and it takes more courage to try out your own business or startup.

[TheDeliberateEngineer]

Have you seen people get promoted moving from one FAANG to another? I haven't, myself, and my usual experience and expectation was that the move would be lateral. I never did succeed in fenagling a promotion while staying with the big tech companies. Having said that, thanks for putting out this video!

[cgerman]

Once you work at a company like that and you put that in your resume, after you are higher value and you can look elsewhere for other opportunities. higher pay, faster promotions etc

[alichamas]

Very good point about getting stuck in a bad luck corner of the company when it comes to promotions. In large tech companies, there's lots of competition in terms of engineering talent. The company (and therefore managers) simply cannot afford to knight everyone based on just hard work alone, so promotions can often become more political than objective, and scarce. If you're unlucky enough to get thrown a turd of a project (meaning its some brown field maintenance style or bug fixing work without much room for innovation) there's practically zero opportunity for you to shine and demonstrate anywhere near your true capabilities, even if you're doing awesome work. Throw a shitty manager in the mix (someone with low empathy skills, even borderline sociopath) and it can actually become a toxic environment for you, even if you're "getting paid well". In those cases you need to take matters into your own hands and move on to a better company and opportunity, it's easier than you think.

[azzazelo]

Well it's fairly soul crushing to be a creative individual stuck in a giant corporate hierarch. Many of the middle management playing the q to q game are just literally useless as your direct management.

[tharindueranga]

If you're in FANMG, you're unique.

[boxes]

Good day Clement. From watching most of your topic discussion videos here on Youtube, I think that you are a very good communicator wherein you give us every information with great enthusiasm. I suggest, if you will find time, start a podcast that talks about these types of topics since they are super interesting. It can be weekly, monthly, or in any schedule consistency that you want. I do hope you consider. Thank you.

[emmanueltorty]

Great video Clement! Loving the ultrawide monitor behind you.

[dq]

I’m a developer not working at FANG, I feel like as long as you’re working with the tech stack you believe in or want to get better at then it doesn’t matter. react native/ expo 🖤