Ask HN: How do you know it's time for you to quit your FAANG job? I know it's a completely different game for different people. Depending on your age, health, marriage, family, and many more, we all have different risk profiles. But can you share the metrics that you have used or plan to use? - Raise seed round? - Cashflow more than your full-time income? - Huge traction tho no money yet? or anything else? |
It was a disaster.
I then co-founded a startup.
I left two years later, parted ways with the other two co-founders in a friendly way.
All this time, I funded my life with my savings.
I had enough on the side to do that, and thankfully other things went well in my life, so I don't really regret it, but...
If I could go back, I'd simply tell myself that most of the time, quitting a well-paying job if you are not in a F*ck-you money [0] territory, is a bad idea.
Everyone is replaceable. I'd argue this is entirely the continuance of zero-rate interest phenomenon and corporations are waking up to it. e.g. Google just announced more layoffs this morning.
I wouldn't trade the perspective I got from the experience, but it was extremely emotionally painful.
Like what?
Indeed. An expert-level knowledge of C++ helps.
Your housing expenses are likely to be your single largest (fixed) expense, so if someone can work hard for a few years and buy a place, it's a lot easier to coast on lower paying jobs.
But otherwise yea concur.
I'm a stickler for diversified asset class allocation
Edit: Normally I am not a fan of explaining myself, but the most fundamental principle of wealth management, diversification, calibrating your risk exposure to various markets, is being downvoted. Thank you for the reminder people
Or is your last bit just saying like do some other investments besides purely stock?
We had realized that it would have been basically impossible for us to hit the milestones you mention without going all-in, full-time. That was the carrot.
The stick was that I didn't like my job very much. I loved my co-workers at amazon and the pay for a new grad broke college kid was kind of surreal, but my inflated ego could not stand being such a lowly cog in such a giant machine. I had just spent almost 3 months on a 3 line tax calculation in a checkout flow (had to work on several continents and query a silly amount of internal java services).
It also made me feel pretty safe that I had just done well in a perf review and my manager told me I could come back any time.
Beyond my own story, I'd add that I've now seen many people do this and none of them have expressed any regrets despite most not getting a win with the startup. For a certain type of person there's just nothing like the high of building something you own and the way that stretches you abilities.
A problem in the scale of a giant company like Amazon is a different problem altogether. Getting these 3 lines wrong could have, I suppose, catastrophic impact so spending 3 months on it makes total sense for Amazon.
These sound like the real question is "when should I bail on my FAANG job to try my hand at my startup?", usually antithetical to making the finances more stable (should only do if you are not dependent on a job, which aligns with your advice.)
Congrats on the FAANG job and the side gig throwing off so much cash you need to post this.
There are definitely some types that only care about their colleagues and bosses (I talked to one in my team just recently), but that's probably not even the majority. These people probably tend to stay a loooong time so maybe they are more visible to the execs?
Only you know what is important to you, and I bet lots of folks here can help inform how different options might score.
Otherwise, if you don't care about the legal / ethical risk, I'd say that you need to make a decision about where to focus once the startup is consuming enough effort that it's crowding your life.
Despite having a seed round when I left, which definitely weighted the decision, I pay a very little salary to myself, basically covering health insurance and a bit more, so I burn my savings.
I made sure to have around 2 years of savings (not counting my little salary), so if in 10 months the picture is too bad, I can simply get a new job.
Now, what really made the difference in my decision is: - You’re the average of the 5 people you hang out the most. My co-founders are great people with a great tracking record and this makes a huge difference - Learnings. You won’t learn nearly as much about building a business if you continue taking it as a side gig - we have already a product already generating some revenue. Not huge, but we believe in a great potential - as I mentioned, the seed round of course changes the perspective - “if I wouldn’t earn as much, would I stay at my job?”, every time I would think about this, the answer was a big NO! I really didn’t want to live this miserable day to day because of a pay check - lastly, which is very personal, every time I’d think of memories of my childhood and the “rich kids” friend of mine, none of them had parents that were employees. Even now, every “rich person” I know are entrepreneurs. Sure… the odds are low, but I rather take the risk and live the life I want
On one hand, I am thinking that I really have no choice other than joining the opportunity presented in front of me, life in tech is either a constant uncomfortable growth and grind or I'll be left behind, there is really no "let's keep my current situation constant in my relatively cushy role".
On the other hand, I am so tempted to not disrupt my life until an external force does it for me (layoff etc) because things are, relatively speaking, going well for me.
Finally, since you mentioned seed etc, I would never, right now, start my own thing, but that's just me and my current circumstances.
>"and quality of life hit (longer hours, worse commute, higher stress) are worth the tradeoff."
Looking back, the hours I put in were never the largest factor in my happiness, it's always been having a cool boss, having interesting problems to solve and having engaged coworkers that mattered most. YMMV.
"there is really no "let's keep my current situation constant in my relatively cushy role".
I don't know if that's true, if you're willing to take a (huge) pay cut. There are probably a ton of small companies that would take for a modest salary and some stock options that may or may not pay off, even if you were going to put in 30 hours a week or something.
Are you looking to for a lifestyle business that allows you to work on interesting problems with interesting people or do you want to transform an industry? Don't raise VC money if you're not sure on the latter.
If you're bootstrapping, most startups take a minimum of 12 - 24 months to find sustainable cashflow. You'll want to have 1 - 2 years of expenses saved (at a very modest salary). If you already have cashflow coming in, you can cut this down.
The goal here is to be able to say "Big MAAMA's outsized influence in the tech sector", of course. Also has some relevant historical antecedents, i.e. "Ma Bell".
I can't fault the engineer for taking advantage if they can.
I'd argue that the single most financially-beneficial choice you can make as a SWE is finding a remote or hybrid job, then leveraging that to live somewhere you enjoy that allows you to save much more money.
This would be so much simpler without Microsoft. At least MANGA is a word.