I don’t get why people still say FAANG, even. Netflix is doing great and has some great tech, but these days it seems like they’re way more of a TV megastudio with a really great engineering dept than a tech giant like Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google.
Sure, they’re no slouches, but it feels like any acronym that includes Netflix needs to also include Microsoft for sure. In fact, by the time you get to Netflix I feel like you’d have to have included Salesforce, Tesla, maybe even Twitter, and probably half a dozen names that aren’t coming to me right now.
I'm fond of "MAGA" for "Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon". That's the 4 largest tech companies on the market, and they're the ones really making America great again.
Much of that's historical reputation, though. Netflix actually underpays compares to some of its peers in the valley now. As of early 2020 my perception (somewhat based on levels.fyi data, as well as personal & friends' salary data) is that the ordering is roughly FaceBook > Snap > AirBnB > Google > Lyft > Stripe > Uber > Netflix > Microsoft > Apple > Amazon > (old-line tech like IBM, Oracle, HP, Juniper, Cisco). This was pre-COVID and tends to move around a lot with stock prices though.
I think if you compare based on sign-on offers offered to candidates with comparable experience, rather than compensation with multiple years of differential stock movement factored in, you get an ordering more like:
Snap > Netflix > Pinterest > (Airbnb, Uber, Lyft) > Facebook > Google > Amazon > Apple > Microsoft. Stripe isn't publicly traded, but if we took for granted their RSU valuation without any discount, it'd be up there with Netflix.
Lack of refreshers may knock Netflix down one or two spots, I suppose, but they do have a practice of giving substantial raises for performance, so maybe not.
After all, the interesting thing to a prospective candidate isn't how much money the engineers working at those companies are making now, it's what sort of offer(s) they can expect.
(Also, all cash comp > 50%+ RSU, imo, even if you bake in an implicit growth factor to equity. The volatility should probably carry a significant penalty.)
I haven't really thought about it much, Netflix engineering hype seems to have died down? Or maybe I'm just oblivious. They seem more regular than they used to be? All their open source was hyped up, I even got stuck using some of it because of people following fads.
And yeah agree Twitter always seems to be missing from engineering hype. I guess their open source and engineering out in the open is a shell of what is was.
Tesla pays low, software isn't the main focus. Salesforce is a b2b company, that i don't think most people actually like? Do they pay like other companies or have unusual or interesting software engineering problems?
Well, people say FAANG mostly due to the high valuations and exponential growth. Another popular acronym is FANGMAN: Facebook; Apple; Netflix; Google; Microsoft; Amazon; Nvidia.
Sure, they’re no slouches, but it feels like any acronym that includes Netflix needs to also include Microsoft for sure. In fact, by the time you get to Netflix I feel like you’d have to have included Salesforce, Tesla, maybe even Twitter, and probably half a dozen names that aren’t coming to me right now.