Most of the people would join FAANG in 2005. But would they join in 2025? Maybe not so much…

The once glamorous set of Silicon Valley unicorns, the campuses of milk and honey, where people laugh and smile, do cool work, get paid well, heaps of RSUs and just life is good. There seems to be an infinite growth, so many things to do and get done.

Then something happened, the profits started to shrink, the products (Google Search) started to worsen. And as the balloon started deflating the managers started to scramble across the entire organization. Big projects were axed, the most senior people who were making suddenly “too much” were let go, big divisions got slimmed down. We entered the cycle of fire-and-hire-for-less, outsourcing and reorganizations. For one Silicon Valley engineer with salary of $250,000 (and heaps of RSUs) you can hire 3 engineers in Eastern Europe with modest RSUs, or a bunch of engineers in Bangalore, India with little RSUs and still save the money for the shareholders.

Internally, you can expect a lot of pressure at high-paying US/European positions to break you and leave you questioning if it is worth to stick around for long enough to vest all your RSUs. The long hours, the scope and responsibility creep is on, the deadlines are tighter, overnights are more common, promotions are fewer, bonuses and extra RSUs are lower and layoffs will be more frequent.

So, would you join FAANG In 2025? What’s in it for you? A lot more of work, for a smaller salary, smaller amount of RSUs, and always looming cuts and layoffs.

It’s time to build new FAANGs…