Why The Best Engineers ALWAYS Leave FAANG

Hi! I’m Rahul, a software engineer and founder with a passion for teaching.

[RahulPandeyrkp]

Our 3rd collab in 3 years :) See you all in 2024...

[vulpixelful]

They leave the gold rush to sell shovels

[AlexSuperTramp-]

Clement wasn't even a software engineer for two years..

[eforeyerman]

Yeah as a software engineer with 11 years of experience, I don’t see all of the “best” engineers leaving to start their own business. Even if you’re really smart and have a really novel idea and work really hard, going into entrepreneurship is always a risky endeavor. For every tech YouTuber who you see who left their big tech job to start their own company, how many did it and failed. Some folks favor stability and are big tech lifers. Yes you can potentially make more money starting your own company, but when you’re an E6 at Meta making $700 K TC, how much more money do you need? :)

[dnd]

I agree on many points in the video. Ironically both of these people built a company that is basically feeding of FAANG 🙂. If everybody would run their own company, there would be no FAANG and in turn there would be no customers for AlgoExpert and Taro :shrug

[thesoftwareman]

Agree with the learning potential not being as great.

I think everyone should see both sides: work at a high growth startup AND FAANG.

Usually I see folks that start their career at one, end up transitioning to the other. Then they spend a lot of time there building their career.

[clem]

What topics should we cover in our next collab? 👀

[MrFromminsk]

I disagree with the title entirely. The title should be "why engineers with entrepreneurial mindset start new businesses". There are plenty of startups founded by people who never worked for the big corp tech.

[bobkameron]

This video definitely resonates with me. I’m at Amazon as a software engineer and am currently working to build the technical / business acumen to do my own tech startup or at least be self employed.

[displog]

You can have crazy impact (and crazy income) in FANG when you get to staff+. It's ridiculous just how many millions of $ the company puts in implementing your designs at that point. Both Rahul and Clement left Big Tech after just 3-4 years, which is just enough to escape the early-career engineer classification. I'll say this: the best engineers grow their influencing and project/service/risk management skills so they can meaningfully effect positive change. The ones who leave FAANG early don't want to grow what it takes to get out of their comfort zones.

[norcal]

I meet some awesome people and got to work on some cool projects having worked at two FAANG companies. But I sacrificed my health due to the work requirements in order to do so.

I found much happiness and peace after I left. Not to shame anyone that is still in it but look after yourselves is the lesson I learned when I got laid off

[tehama]

Glad to see you two making another set of videos together.

[cmmnt-me]

Always be closing. It's better to close by yourself than company would do that.

[adhin]

I recently discovered your channel and have been binge watching your videos. The ones I find most interesting are the ones where you get technical. For someone in my position (4 YOE) I learn a lot and it gives me things to think about as I advance in my career.

[EDEdDNEdDYFaN]

Cool video.

One follow on thought - there isn't really anything that would have stopped you from talking to the sales teams at Facebook if you really wanted to right? It could have been a mutually beneficial Convo to have if you went out of your way to chat with them and find out pain points that you could help address

[dejanualex]

Hmmm, I'm wondering tho' if a distinguished engineer (e.g Jeff Dean) is reaching the outlier outcome ?

[zachary_thomas]

FWIW, Nvidia engineers who stayed at the firm over the last decade+ made millions

[rubberducky]

they leave faang so that they can sell their own courses on how to crack faang. it is a pyramid scheme. the other way to make money as faang is to become Instagram star selling life in a day story. we have more faang leetcoders than real software engineers. talking about impact is bs. they can make open source contribution. how is running a YouTube channel better than writing a new emulator. this is hustle non sense fooling new grads. Clement made money during sde gold rush selling shovels from non tech to Google sde in 6 months. while rahul has real credentials unlike Clement, he is late to the party. senior engineers are not going to fall for a herd mentality product.

[gaofan]

Can I replace someone who wanna leave FAANG? I already appreciate the amount of money I am gonna earn. I live in Tokyo, and sad thing is Google and Amazon are the only 2 FAANG companies which have engineer teams in Japan. And if you happen to fail interview once, then they not gonna select you maybe next 6-12 months and call you for interviews. And they also hire only once a year. So, if you ever thought that Japan is good place to work, think twice. The rest of companies not gonna pay you even close what Amazon or Google paying. So, if you wanna big tech and good salary - better not come to Japan

[samirneupane]

The fact is Clement himself left the google and selling course how to get into google 🤣🤣.