A couple of reasons:

- Comp: Total comp for a new hire with 3+ yrs dev experience is probably 300k -> 400k at a FAANG on average (with possibility to be higher). If you want to live and raise a family in your own house in the bay area (2.5 Million for a reasonable house), this matters.

- Access: Few places have the kind of scale and resources of these companies, that can make them fun places to work. You also get to learn a lot from really good coworkers (and go to talks, explore different things, etc.)

- Work/Life: FAANGs are generally pretty good for work/life balance (though this can vary by team and manager). They're generally pleasant places to work as an engineer.

> If you want to live and raise a family in your own house in the bay area (2.5 Million for a reasonable house), this matters.

I love the bay area, and I have terrible judgement, but even my terrible judgement and my love of the bay area combined aren't a bad enough combination to make me think it's a good place to raise a family.

Except for housing costs, I think it’d be a great place to raise kids.

It does have many top schools, relative safety, and an achievement oriented culture. Which comes with problems, but upsides as well.

I must admit I always feel weird when I see numbers like that mentioned for software engineers. In Germany a more reasonable number with a few years of experience might be in the €50-55k ballpark.

Granted, the cost of living is significantly lower in most cities here than it is in the bay area, but still it just feels... weird.

Edit: Fixed a typo.

I think Europe (and the UK) undervalue software engineers.

At least in the UK this seems like a cultural thing where management is high status/high value and engineers are low status/low value.

I think the US generally gets this right (at least in silicon valley), but it could partly be because the US has some extremely valuable software companies that operate on a global stage that aren't really present elsewhere.

Really great software engineers can generate insane value at a great company with a good business.

I realise this is tangential to the original topic, but this notion that the UK is not a part of Europe (and therefore mentioned separately) seems really weird to me. They can leave the EU as much as they want, but it doesn't change the fact that physically they're still in Europe.

Is this because of some perceived notion of cultural differences? Because if we're starting to draw lines based on that we probably need to divide mainland Europe into a bunch of separate parts as well.

It's because America has (and has historically had) a closer relationship with the UK than with other European countries. The British see themselves as different than the rest of Europe as evidenced by sayings like "on the continent", so it's natural for us to pick some of that up.

I only said it that way in an attempt to be clear because they left the EU (and I’ve heard people use Europe to mean EU).

I see, thank you for clarifying. It's true that some people do use Europe to mean EU, I hadn't taken that possibility into account.

In my experience, this is mostly done in sentences like "In Europe something or another is allowed/forbidden/... (by law)", but I can definitely see where you're coming from.

Russia is mostly in Europe, population-wise.

From the numbers I've seen, Zurich is the one exception that pays comparably to the Bay Area, NYC, and Seattle.

Unfortunately Zurich may also compare on cost of living. Maybe that's all there is to it, but I somehow doubt that.

Yeah, but it's better than say London which compares on cost of living but pays abysmally.

There's only really one place that can have these big tech companies, and that is the US. What technology companies of note do the UK have?

It's just stupid nonsense like "writing spreadsheets for the local government" and minor web development. In tech, it really is US vs. ROW

You mean the kind of big companies that repeatedly break the law, engage in unethical behaviour, and put growth above all else? Yeah. Only the US has those. Congratulations.

Plenty of tech companies in Europe either way; you just don't know about them. Do you think Europe is some poor underdeveloped continent with uneducated people who can only "write spreadsheets?" What a patronizing comment.

You have to break eggs to make omelettes. The US is the only country in the world (perhaps excepting China) with any tech industry of value, just as it is the only country with any finance industry of value.

Europe has some companies with IT departments, some American companies with European offices, and some no-name consultancies (which are often US-owned). The indigenous European tech industry is a complete joke, since there is hardly any of it.

A normal programmer in Europe earns maybe $2-4k per month, or $24-48k per year. For context, the American poverty line for a family of four is $24.3k, so they are earning about $21/month above the poverty line.

A normal programmer in the USA earns maybe $100k per year, and up to $300-400k if they work at a big company. In Europe, the CEO of an ostensibly big company might earn $300-400k. It's an utter joke.

That I haven't heard of the alleged European tech companies just goes to show my point. DeepL, what the hell is that? Spotify is somewhat larger-scale web development, but still just a Mickey Mouse startup. The NYSE couldn't even get their flag right! The other two (relatively serious companies) are located in the UK, which is slated to leave the European Union soon.

Just so you know, salaries in Bangalore are comparable to that of SF if adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity. If you don't believe me, feel free to look up levels.fyi for both and match the conversions through: http://salaryconverter.nigelb.me/

That's because SV outsources their development work there, artificially inflating prices. In reality, India has a 'tech industry' in the same sense that Africa has an 'AI industry' - there is industry and it is vaguely related to AI, but tagging images does not an 'AI industry' make.

If there is development work happening, then there is a tech industry. Perhaps you may consider a tech industry to only exist if it is spawning a million startups a day but that is not a view shared by the rest of the world. See: http://elitebusinessmagazine.co.uk/global/item/how-the-tech-...

ARM, for example?

But let's assume for a second that the only relevant companies are US-based. A lot of them also hire in other countries and it is my understanding that compensation isn't what it is in the US either.

ARM have offices all over the world and are owned by the Japanese. The European "tech industry" is and remains a joke.

American companies also have offices all over the world. For example, Google have several offices in Africa. This does however not mean that Ghana has a booming tech industry, it just means that sometimes you need domestic offices for minor regulatory reasons.

SoftBank only bought ARM in 2016, they are by origin very much from the UK and I don't think anyone is going to argue that ARM wasn't relevant before 2016.

DeepMind was also founded in the UK and later bought by Google. Their HQ remains in London.

DeepL, who are providing a much better translation product than Google or Microsoft by many accounts, are a German company.

Spotify, which I'm sure needs no explanation, is a Swedish company.

While it is certainly true that the US pays better, I think you need to re-evaluate your position that noone else is creating good or valuable products.

Two of these companies are British, and the other two are complete jokes. It is like talking about the 'Ukrainian software industry'. Sure, some of them have computers, but that does not a tech industry make.

I think American companies generally do have a lot better comp in places like London compared to the non American software companies there.

I’m not 100% sure - I have less insight into this.

I can't speak to the job market in the UK, but in Germany there doesn't seem to be a great difference based on anecdotal evidence from friends. There's absolutely a chance this is incorrect as well, because discussing wages is still somewhat against societal norms here (which is stupid in my opinion).

Here in Chile, swe coworkers earn about 25k after tax if you are not a manager, boss or the like.

What kind of house is a reasonable house for $2.5M?

The vast majority of engineers at FAANGs are _not_ commuting out of San Francisco -- looking at where the workforce really is: Mountain View, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, you most definitely don't need to shell out $2.5M for a reasonable house.

Yes you do - Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino, and nearby peninsula cities are even more expensive than SF. At least in SF you can get a nice new construction apartment for 875k.

You can find a cheap house for $1.25M in San Mateo or on the outskirts of San Jose, but it’ll still be pretty small and far away.

Fair enough. Palo Alto is a nice area, expensive market.

Why ceiling is sow low in US/Canada homes?

That's not universally true. US homes in warm climates had high ceilings until the advent of central climate control. Homes in cold areas tended to have low ceilings to keep the warm air where it was most useful: at the level of the occupants. Eight foot ceilings are very common in tract homes built between the introduction of air conditioning and the start of the McMansion trend in the 1990s. Common areas with higher ceilings are not rare in newer homes.

It's always... interesting... To look at SF on Zillow. There are a few nice-looking options in the ~1.5M range, mostly foreclosures, and it seems mostly in not-so-great areas. I don't know if there are any great areas in SF proper though.

FAANG has a much larger presence in Silicon Valley than SF. SF is more biased towards startups. Although it’s true all the major tech companies have SF shuttles.

San Jose’s median house price is $1.2 million. A million will get you a quality ranch.

(I fully appreciate the ridiculousness of presenting a million as “affordable”)

> I have yet to meet anyone who feels good about the prospect of working for them, anyone who works there who's super proud of their mission

I worked at the N in FAANG. It was the best large company work environment I ever worked in. The people I worked with were top notch, I looked forward to going into to work.

Our mission was to deliver entertainment around the world. I believed in that mission. I think entertainment is an important part of people on this planet relaxing, which leads to them being happier and all the outcomes that come from that.

I'll admit Netflix is different than most of the rest in that it isn't driven by ad revenue and increased consumerism, so maybe that made it easier to love the mission.

But yeah, I definitely enjoyed working there. Even without the crazy paycheck (although that admittedly helped a lot).

What about delivering MAFIAA's DRMs around the world ? (after the second attempt by Netflix to get in the streaming market.)

Netflix never wanted to do DRM. They fought the studios and tried to teach them for years that it was pointless. Eventually they had to relent because the studios had more power than they do.

To answer the follow up question -- the Netflix originals have DRM because they aren't made by Netflix, they are still made by regular Hollywood studios that demand DRM. And for the few where Netflix has control, it's easier technology-wise to just put DRM on everything instead of littering the code with exceptions for some content.

At the end of the day, DRM for rented content isn't so bad. You're renting it. You shouldn't have control over it.

I still don't like DRM on content I'm buying.

Sorry, even if Netflix was used as a front for Hollywood for the DRM in HTML push, this smells too much of a "just following orders" justification - they benefited greatly by bending to Hollywood's wishes !

Also, their subscription model is quite different from plain rentals, and I'm having issues with the renting model anyway... and Netflix isn't so much renting as subscription... and even people that don't follow these issues are starting to realize that a system where there's no "standard" and you have to subscribe to multiple subscription platforms is bad !

I looked into moving to the bay area and FAANG were the only companies paying sufficiently high wages for me to break even after the difference in my mortgage payments. I don't want to work for FAANG, so I didn't move.

There is a lot of truth to this. Once you commit to FAANG, you need to stay within FAANG to maintain your quality of life.

I assume he is interviewing with the other top companies too (e.g. "payment processing company" would be something like Stripe or Square probably).

I don't know what kind of selective bargaining power you guys have, but i would kill just to get my foot in the door of a FAANG.

The best path in I can see is basically practicing interviews and landing an on site interview with Uber or Lyft on interviewing.io (where you can get a real interview just by passing enough practice interviews), then reaching out to recruiters at FAANGs and saying that you have interviews with X Y and Z lined up already. That tends to get replies, since you’re signaling that you’re vetted already and recruiters are paid per hire.

It's nice working on any well known product really. I spent 3 years with a tiny startup doing enterprise software, and I can hardly even explain it to other employers, because hell, not even my own boss knew what he was trying to sell. We just had some kind of survey builder platform with a mess of features that was starting to stick with people.

Finding my 2nd job is just as hard as getting the first one, as the product I helped develop is just not that interesting. It would be so much easier to just say I worked at Google, Airbnb, Apple, whatever. I'd be upset, but I don't want to work for a FAANG regardless.

Good luck!