Why You Should Leave Your FAANG Job

Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel discuss the struggles of working at FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) and how to strategize leaving a big tech job to become a founder at a startup.

00:00 - When you should quit?
01:00 - What value can technical founders extract from a FAANG job?
03:21 - Assumptions - Why working at FAANG makes sense?
03:48 - Reality of the job
06:01 - Transferable Skills
08:35 - Path to get funded
10:55 - The retention trap - What's the company trying to do?
15:31 - When to get out?
17:31 - FAANG Optimization
18:56 - Plan at the start

[ycombinator]

When do you know it's time to leave your job to start a company?

[vhpupuyoh]

I was in this situation!!! I left the job, found my startup, work on it 6 months, launch my product, didn't succeed to raise money, and now going to work on FAANG again (need to support a family with 8 children...) to save more money to continue my startup, and also working on it on my free time. I believe that I will succeed if I will focus, continue and not give up!

[mmaaaxxxxx]

Just want to add a point: people outside tech place tremendous value on FAANG experience. So when you have to talk to customers, partners etc, suddenly FAANG brand value shines.

Sure those of us in tech know it's all BS, but that's not how 99.99%+ of the world thinks.

[rohankamath]

My first job out of college at Amazon was the job Dalton described.
My next job at Microsoft was actually incredibly high impact and helped me learn and grow my career exponentially.
That opened doors to my current role at Stripe.

The one thing that is heavily missed in this video is that sometimes people don't really have a choice. Some of us come from financial hardships, some of us are on highly volatile visas, some of us have giant student loans to repay. The FAANG jobs might not be what we dreamed of doing to change the world with our tech skills, and we know that it's often fairy dust in pretty marketing wrappers, but those jobs offer a level of stability and security that allow many of us to afford our families a slightly higher and more comfortable life than they have ever experienced, they help us remain in the country at least long enough to repay our debts.

I'm not disagreeing with any of the points in this video, I honestly wish I could have made different decisions in my early career; but unfortunately not everyone can take that plunge when their risk appetite has the potential to cause collateral damage to their near and dear ones.

[giosanchez]

I’m at FAANG and this is so spot on. The vesting at my smiley face company is the worst of all top firms, and I’ve seen the equity and signing bonuses as a trap since day 1.

I stashed the signing bonus and counted RSUs as money lost and am on my way out. There’s too much cool stuff going on to be stuck at an enormous company working on a trivial little project helping them take over the world. It’s the startup life for me

[Yavin]

As time goes on, most projects at FAANG will be about maintaining and updating legacy applications and projects, and the number of cutting edge projects will lessen as FAANGs become more concerned about maintaining shareholder value than they will be about creating the next big thing. This happened to IBM and MS. When I was a kid, getting a job at IBM was the epitome of career success.

[citywizardgames]

PREACH! This is everything I've ever felt that's wrong about faang and have had trouble articulating. Potentially unfulfilling projects (ads), potentially evil projects (psychological manipulation), potentially canned projects after spending a ton of time on it, and golden handcuffs.

[prestonrasmussen]

I know the focus of this video was on FAANG but it feels a bit biased since it seems to be taken for granted that if you found or work at a startup that you can be doing something interesting.

Most startups also don’t do anything particularly interesting, especially since to get funding your startup needs a path to profitability. So most startups boil down to “we are doing something similar to large tech company X, but worse.”

Even if you are able to found a company that you consider interesting, in order to hire employees you will need to attract talent. It’s so hard to compete with FAANG in that, so it’s hard to keep a team that has the same quality as FAANG companies. That creates downward pressure on your ability to recruit and on your ability to maintain a clean code base.

[oasdfe]

what you fail to mention is not everyone wants the stress of running a company, some people value security over anything else. a FAANG job provides securty

[makkus_]

I think this needs to illustrate whos its marketing towards more. "Most FAANG employees work on things like ad servers" is not a justification for not gaining experience with a scaled company.

One example is, I could learn ElasticSearch in college, but who here can say they worked on an ElasticSearch cluster with 7+ nodes of 1tb data each in college? That's something I got to do in the real world, and it helped me understand the needs and consequences of that scale without affecting the customers in my startup.

[stephaneessomba]

Beginning from scratch or almost from scratch, one of hardest thing in life. But when you achieve it, it's a new life

[Thecoolestjen]

Yes! The Retention Trap! That is where I am at. Im a 46 year old 20 year construction worker (laborer) who desperately wants out. I have a business idea and have been doing my research and am ready to move forward which brought me to you. I am glad to have found you.

[vibhoo]

These conversations are gold mine. More people should watch it.

[varming]

My advice to graduates joining Amazon is to dive into AWS. Most new services an Amazon was built on AWS and this gives you skills that are useful outside of Amazon. :)

[ellthompson]

It really depends on the kind of role you take on at a big tech company. I worked in a small team that had been acquired by a big tech company. We got to operate like a small company while having all the perks and access to scale that big tech provides. Research the role and not the company! Worth noting that I was recommended this role by a former colleague and not a recruiter.

[ignaciob]

I usually I enjoy all your videos but this felt personal to me. Here is my completely subjective opinion based purely in my experience and I could totally be wrong:

YCombinator, and "startup talk" in general, makes you forget about successful bias: MOST STARTUPS FAIL. Most founders fail. And if you don't have the backup money (savings or family support), you risk stalling your finances, making them worse or even going bankrupt. I did the stupid thing and I almost destroyed myself. My first startup failed completely, my second one "fail" by staying as a small business (10-15 employees). I'm sure I'm going back for a third one, but for now a FAANG job is giving me lots of value and I'd totally give the advise of joining one, specially if you need it for financial stability. If you don't, there is still plenty of technical value!

After years here I keep learning and there is a bunch of stuff I will totally transfer to my next endeavor. The point about internal tools is just wrong, because (1) I can build versions of those tools if I need or (2) I can get alternatives open source or commercial. Exposing myself to those internal tools and see real applications has been super valuable and makes me think about the ones I used to have. And also not just technical skills, soft skills as well. Seeing how a company works on the inside also made me realize all the things I got wrong, and I definitely transferring that knowledge back.

But hey, don't listen to me. I'm just another failed founder :) now!

PS. Final thought, maybe this video is addressed to **young** people who have ONLY work for a FAANG. If that's your case, then yeah probably thinking about quitting your comfort zone must be a scary thought.

EDIT: The more I think about this video, the more I disagree: Another unknown fact about FAANG workers is that a lot of engineers actually quit to start a startup. Like the jump between founder to Eng/EM is well known. Examples: 1) My manager was also a founder (at a YC COMPANY!) before he joined and I’m sure he’s also going back at some point. 2) Another of my teammates revived his apps after he got the green card (you can’t work on side projects on work visas :c) and he actually made them so successful with what he learned at the company that his big salary with stock wasn’t competing anymore with his other income, so he quit. 3) And another friend from Stripe went from unsuccessful founder to Angel investor with the money he made! Like… of course there is PLENTY of value you’ll get from a FAANG. And the work itself is not bad at all, there is actually pretty cool and challenging projects.

EDIT 2: Final edit, i promise. How many startups are out there by Ex-Facebookers, ex-Googlers, ex-whatever: Stripe is one of them. Wizeline, Kueski, SevOne, etc. All the Tesla killers by ex-Tesla engineers!

[RahulPandeyrkp]

As someone who quit Facebook to start a startup, and then publicly explained my decision on YouTube, so much good advice here!

[MARWANBILLAN]

Wow that's a great conversation that young software engineers should watch!
I quit my job at Intel after 3 years to start my own business and leaving the corporation was the most freeing thing I've ever done in my life.
On the other hand, many friends of mine are stuck in the traps you're talking about and they are not aware of it.

[calebamore]

I would be happy to just be given the opportunity to work at a FAANG company.

[CuttingEdgeSchool]

This content is HIGHLY valuable. Love these videos.