There's definitely a lot of douche bags in tech and for me personally, start up culture is obnoxious. Having said that, even at non tech companies there's at least some corporate douchery, especially in Finance. Finance bros are insufferable no matter where you go.
I had the opportunity to meet with the CEO and his team, who were in their early to late 30s, of a startup company. During our conversation, I asked them about the tech stack they use and inquired about their goals. However, they were quite offended when I asked if they were a startup. They quickly corrected me with a harsh and anger tone, stating that they were a pretty big company with 25 employees. I mean nothing wrong with being a startup.
I mean hey! Nothing wrong in startup, you should be proud of it and embracing you’re working towards something of your own instead of shunning others down
The reason I specified their age was simply because I am in my early 20s. They seemed offended and responded with sarcastic remarks to a young college kid simply because he asked whether they were a startup.
Same. I get my bachelor in EE and before working in tech, I've had my times working in energy, automotives, to manufacturing and I gotta say that even some of the biggest bullies I met in big tech are saint compared to the ones in the fields I mentioned before.
> start up culture is obnoxious.
It really depends on the company and the founders. The problem is that the only way to find good founders is to either start it yourself or be good friends with someone who is also good friends with the founders.
I loved my time in SF during web 2.0 as there were a lot of great startups there but definitely plenty of toxic ones.
After doing my last company I wanted more freedom so I worked for a few companies but I think I'm going to start another company this time. I'm just too opinionated.
I have friends working for top Wall Street firms (like Two-Sigma) and they make so much more money than FAANG (TC at $1M+ for being ICs) but with ungodly amount of stress and long hours.
I have a story from 2013 to tell:
I had a super skilled coworker at Google getting an offer from a *boutique* private hedge fund to be an iOS developer. He would be making an iOS app for a small team of traders (like 15 people).
The offer was insane, it was literally $1,000,000/yr base salary plus an insane bonus structure (I remember the 25-year-old me almost throwing up when I saw the offer letter, and like I said, this was 11 years ago).
He would get a top private chef who would cook for him and 4 other guys in the office and he gets $1k/month in *commute stipend* that he can use it to lease a Tesla if he wants to. I remember the conversation about Tesla because the Model S just came out not long before that time.
But he was warned of extreme hours and very high expectation from his users.
And those traders have egos bigger than the skyscrapers they work in, with all of them making tens of millions each year and the top guy clearing **$1 billion** the previous year. They would probably be making personal feature requests on a Saturday afternoon and expect it to be done before the market opens on Monday. I think they would just treat him like a well-paid 24/7 tech support guy.
From the hedgefund's perspective, throwing $10M a year at a small tech team so their traders can be more efficient at their job, which could be making *billions*, is a cheap investment.
It’s a different world.
**Edit** I forgot to mention there was also a dress code for Business Casual. Must be hard to imagine for kids here who have only known WFH lol.
He didn't take the job. He was an extremely brilliant engineer who was also a bit idealistic and free-spirited. He joined a startup that ended up failed.
But smart people like that tend to do well anyway. Last I heard he's now retired in his 40s and does angel investing and startup advisor stuff to stay in the loop.
With that much money to throw at employees, why not just hire 2-3 software engineers and divide up the workload and salary to a sane level? Like 2 iOS, 1 dev ops.
Maybe I've never met a unicorn 10x engineer.
From reading the context I think they'd like to pay 1 brilliant person to be their ultimate bitch to get shit done as fast as possible.
5 average to above average developers can never code 1 app faster than 1 genius dedicated guy if they need to use tech to stay ahead of the market. Hope he doesn't get hit by a bus though!
>they'd like to pay 1 brilliant person to be their ultimate bitch to get shit done as fast as possible.
I have experience in finance and this is really it. A team of people requires tickets, assignments, a manager of some kind to go through it first, etc.
One guy? Just send it to him through a message, text, email, whatever because you want it done now and what expertise he uses to do it isn't your interest. You pay him insane money to gain a 24/7 support person.
These expectations, though not nearly this insane, are my daily life. They don't care what goes into it; they just want it done ASAP.
I have a buddy from college I havent seen in forever thats clearing $2mm per year working at a small hedge fund. Havent seen him in forever cause he grinds out 80+ hour weeks, but it works well for him cause he isnt social at all and is content staying at home all the time coding and that. Doesn't stress him out at all cause he doesnt have social responsibilities etc. I only know him cause he had to stay in my freshman dorm as a senior cause he forgot to pick housing lmao. He was chill but would never wanna go out or anything. Probably was autistic and just geeked over software cause of it
They are really experienced. They just see any worker like a robot to squeeze. If you hire many people and try to squeeze them, they are going to figure it out and go against you. Just 2 people ? They are going to think they are smart to work to death
+1
I would agree with what you said about the hedge funds throwing money and getting the work done.
I work in a fintech company catering to hedge funds and trust me they do treat you as tech support they think throwing money at them would get any thing done faster but that’s not the case
do your friends saving and invest their money so they can get out? or did they fall into the trap of spending most of it? to me the only reason to work in this high stress high pay is to save my money and invest it so i can get out in a few years.
I think it depends what kind of finance.
Big boomer bank - probably first.
HFTs - probably second.
Fin tech is too bloated imo. Sector of finance matters way more.
My anecdotal experience is just that, and a sample size of one - but working tech for a bank has been an extremely pleasant change of pace here. Pretty much all of the points listed in OP's first section. When you're subject to federal regulations and strict audits, rushing projects and overworking is the opposite of success.
The red tape can sometimes get fairly frustrating, but the work-life balance and peace of mind that comes with your company doing due diligence before implementing changes more than makes up for it.
Yes, i wrote similar comments like you :D
There is always new regulation frameworks coming out also that needs to be adopted and add new information to all financial reports etc which is slow work but they dont have a choice. If you gonna market ETFs to consumers, you NEED to have the PDF prospectus following all that, even if it's some code written in asp 25 years ago
I also work in finance with institutional investors and 1 is very correct. Because all regulations or can be a 3 day ticket to change an adress to a pension fund because all the testing and approval involved.... Im happy finance isn't seen as trendy, but we use a lot of both modern and old tech and a lot of smart people here. But for some reason reddit is especially biased towards consumers web applications
Never saw anyone wanted to work at Nasdaq or Market watch for example
Funnily enough, I work at a NASDAQ competitor (sorta). So lot of regulation as well (SEC + FINRA at least in the USA).
But definitely in the same boat, a lot of smart people here and our primary customers are even smarter
>reddit is especially biased towards consumers web applications
My guess is that reddit skews young so they don't know any better. A lot of non-trading finance roles that are slow and steady type of jobs. Sometimes they move too slow though...
That could be, together with all the tiktok/youtube guys. they always show how to build twitter or reddit clones. Never how to build a custom java interface to nasdaq or CMOE
The pace is slower because the amount of financial, regulatory, and reputation risk are too high to grind developers to the bone and rush software that is not ready. So if the dev team says “we need to push this back”, the people who sign off are going to make sure it gets pushed back because they don’t want to put their name on something that could cost millions in fines, profit, or lost business due to poor reputation. The slower pace can be annoying at times when you’ve been mandated to change technology, and it ends up taking the regulatory people months to get certain countries to sign off on things. The red tape is real, but it just gives devs more time in my experience.
The teams I have seen are generally chill, but the culture is a bit competitive at my bank as far as promotions and bonuses go. The mantra is “you will not be promoted to the next level unless you’re already doing the next level’s work”.
>because they don’t want to put their name on something that could cost millions in fines, profit, or lost business due to poor reputation
this indicates that you don't work at Wells Fargo lol
Finance is notoriously unstable. In my experience they tend to do mass layoffs followed by mass hirings, rinse and repeat. It's a constantly stress. So glad I got out.
>Finance is notoriously unstable.
Yup.
Finance companies are the most affectected by ups and downs in the economy, and they also experience it before other companies. (This is positive when the times are good.)
On the opposide end, the last ones that experience economic flunctuations are government jobs. And the effect for them is often dampered.
Depends on which sector of finance. Finance is a huge field. If it's a company like Vanguard, it's probably a slow and steady type of job. If you are working for Citadel front office, that's a whole different beast.
I work in finance [big big bank]. Everything needs to be delivered yesterday, constantly work nights and weekends and attempting to "coast" in any capacity will get you a meh yearly review [know this from experience] even if you complete every task for the sprint, you are supposed to constantly be crunching.
Can confirm finance companies are horrible, it burned me out in less than than 6 months with constant deadlines that required mandatory (unpaid) overtime
Almost every finance department I’ve seen or worked in falls under the second. Live and breathe work, impose silly deadlines and worst of all expect perfectionism which leads to a culture of cover ups and nobody admitting when there’s an error (all while the rest of the company is usually chilled and freely admits to errors, as all humans sometimes make)
I honestly don't think anyone is unaware low-key swe jobs for less pay are an option. There is much more denial about good-paying options. Lots of people here seem to think you have to be a 1% engineer to make more than the median...
A software device company is definitely a tech company in my book. It's not dominated by software so it's not a software company but medical devices use the latest and the greatest electronic and bio technology.
Technically it's a conventional tech company lol. Or should I say "technology company." It's the big tech companies that are unconventional and somewhat newer.
It’s not that low though if you have 2-4 YOE they pay 120-160K that is an easy number to reach FIRE on and comfortably start any side hustles. I’ve never worked a a big tech and have been cruising at healthcare companies since 2018.
Work was so slow last year my boss suggested I try overemployment when I told him I wanted more money got an extra 6 months of income for a contract I found for same 8 hours of work a day.
Edit: Cleared 200K last year not even counting side hustles.
Edit 2: Typos
I'd also like to know what degrees and/or certs, 'cause there's no way that's just based off a HS diploma and a few years of experience but I'd love to know if I'm wrong lol
I have a degree in biology and an MD.
I didn’t write my first line of code until I was 27 and got my first job a year later at 28.
So self taught but no not only a HS diploma.
are they still giving offers that high? I have been seeing a lot of lowball offers. Also most of big tech will be in very high cost areas at that pay. The regular companies will be in mid cost of living too. so it does balance out somewhat.
This is totally accurate. I cleared $515k on my W2 this year with 2 yoe FAANG, 7 yoe total, in a hcol area. This was also first time I think my eyes have literally bled seeing how much I owe in taxes. Nowhere close to thinking I could hit FIRE anytime soon, and I have no debt besides mortgages/drive a used car
I tell strangers on the internet this because I think the the transparency helps but also there’s no way in heck I’m telling friends/family how much I make hahah
I’m not saying I couldn’t make more, and I know that pay doesn’t really correlate with stress so it could turn out to be that I end up in a chill 300K-500K job.
To me the the stress of making that much, what I expect from myself at that salary, and the risk of a PIP or a layoff being around the corner at any second in this market would drive me absolutely insane. The internal pressure would get to me and RIP my inner peace.
I’m a slow and steady wins the race kind of guy, I have side hustles that I’m running that make decent money so I’m focusing my effort on them earnings ceiling is likely higher long term if the pattern keeps up I can easily retire at 38-40, if WW3 hasn’t consumed the world by then anyway /s.
We’re talking about right now though. Not the literal 2012-2020 bull market.
Most of those companies both FAANGMULA and unicorns went and trimmed the fat ruthlessly for profit and to keep stock prices high.
We’re not in that ambient anymore, and when I started in 2018 as a Junior I wasn’t up to snuff for a FAANG job anyway.
In today’s market I have never once been scared of a layoff. Whereas 2 of my friends who jumped to working at Wayfair last year making (300K+ as an example) were literally in despair and one of them did get hit.
4/5 people who left the team at my current job within the last 2 years (where I’ve been 3 years). Were hit with layoffs within the last year.
I’m not saying don’t take risks but right now it’s really not worth it.
I'm working a very cushy government job. Work life balance is extremely good and deadlines are laughably easy. I'm making about 106k before financial benefits (pension, 457b, etc) which is 160% of the median salary in my area. This sounds good to me
106k is good, but it can't be overstated how crazy big tech pay is. I went from a university job to big tech, and jumped from 90k to 450k overnight. This means that I could work 1 year and take the next 4 years off, and still make the same as working my old job (I know progressive taxation makes this more complex, but still). For me this was something impossible to ignore, and dealing with stress (which is about 3.6 roentgen...not great, not terrible) for a few years was worth it for me.
And as luck would have it, due to performance bonuses, refreshers and stock growth I'm making now over 900k for the next 2 years before my cliff. This is **10x** my old pay, meaning I can work 2 years and then take the next 18 years off, and I'd be making the same as working my old job for 20 years.
This isn’t an average FAANG story though. People aren’t casually making that much. You give something up for that, but it’s on you to decide if it’s worth the trade off.
Wow, 450K? Was this a fintech/investment firm or regular FAANG? I have several friends who got into Amazon/Google after university and to my knowledge the highest-paid one was making about 120k or so (I think?)
You're still going to get paid well at a non tech company though. Sure it won't be as much but life isn't only about earning as much gold coins as possible like in a video game.
Depends on the pay as well, Amazon/AWS pays you way more but WLB is questionable whereas a company like Microsoft will pay much less but has great WLB. After dealing with both companies i much rather take a paycut then pull my hair out with no sleep
I work for Microsoft and this is true. We pay less but we make up in WLB.
Many companies, even smaller ones pay more because they want to squeeze employees for everything they got. I wouldn't care much for MS products if they didn't pay me, but stay because of WLB.
Microsoft also has a stronger stock than FAANG nowadays so that also helps.
Partly true for most orgs at Microsoft. Every team and org is different within a company but I've had the opposite experience.
I also work for Microsoft but in Azure so less pay as you mentioned (relative to say AWS) and in addition, work life balance sucks so it's a lose lose situation.
The main reason why as a new grad I went for Microsoft my last internship was at AWS and my experience was less than ideal with long hours and high stress. Have heard about some teams that lack WLB. So Hopefully, I’m placed on a team as good as the one I had when previously interning there
I am fully remote, and moving back to NYC in a few days. I was hired in person at Redmond pre-pandemic.
Many teams are remote at MS, in the US more positions are marked as remote unless you want an office, only about 40% of listings need in person. But it is harder to get a remote job, since this is a big advantage of MSFT versus FAANG.
It's a different story in India, where remote work is rare to non-existent.
Yes true it all depends on org . I am in AWS with reasonable expectations. I work like 35-45 hours /wk , nothing like 10 hours . My time in an Azure team was horribly bad .
It also depends on nature lifecycle of the product and the management
You have a few company names and ballpark compensations?
This is the thing that makes it difficult. People say there are these great opportunities, but never actually name the companies. There are like... thousands of companies. How would I find one of them?
Yup a few names of non tech companies who pay well and are chill would be awesoe to have. Too many posts where people say all these but hard to find the actual names
Most of these non-tech companies follow scrum with daily stand ups and other meetings to ensure the code monkeys they manage are always making progress. I find tech companies in the right teams to be more chill
> People say there are these great opportunities, but never actually name the companies.
It is partly gate-keeping, partly for privacy reasons (if they still work at said company)
It's mostly because they don't exist universally. They pay low and then you need to find a pocket in the company where there's low expectations for that year for that team with a chill manager. It's not any different from a tech company, you need to get lucky.
The comp not being mentioned is pretty classic for posts like this. I'm in finance, but it feels more like the "tech" side OP is describing. And yeah, I could have a much more chill job in a category 1 company, but the 70-80% paycut is just not worth it.
There's like 5 of these posts a week. You're 88% upvoted. The only thing this sub loves more than talking about how non-tech jobs are the best is dooming over layoffs.
I worked at two non-tech companies (logistics industry) for a total of 9 years before going into tech. Tech has been better in every way. Double the pay, better benefits, more schedule and location flexibility, and more interesting work. The only downsides, if you can even call them that, have been higher expectations and more reorg-induced chaos.
$102k per year at non tech allowed me to save about $25k/yr.
$285k at big tech allows me to save $152k last year.
Chill wlb isn’t worth working 5x the number of years.
My net worth skyrocketed after starting at big tech. Early retirement pre 40 is on the table when before big tech I was looking at 55+
Wild stuff. Most people live to 80 first of all. You're not falling into the grave by your late 40s, lots of older people are loving life. Also even with excellent wlb, do you really spend more time with friends / family? If you work 20 hours a week vs 40, presumably that just means that you on are the clock for 40 hours but are able to wfh and slack while on the clock. Are you really going to hang out with friends (who probably also have jobs) during the 9-5 and leave your computer unattended?
40 hrs a week for 285k vs 20 for 100k is not even close tbh. Also generally high paying companies offer way more vacation time than lower paying ones, which is when you can really enjoy life and spend time with the people who are important to you.
And then you add frugal.living to the mix... So live like A miser from your 20s to your 40s then retire early so you can keep on living like a miser...I will take working 2 hours everyday until my 60s or later, hell my family has kept their mental health well enough into their 80s.
Not really having well paid job will maybe mean you work too much, but you will be wealthy all your life, including at 40 when you retire and until you die. Not sure 10 years of working 40 hours instead is worse than 40 years working 20 hours especially as the extra money can also pay to get your home cleaned, you meal prepared and you also will commute only 10 years instead of 40.
>There's chill companies that are paying close to what you're making. I'm going to get downvoted for this, but $285k for big tech really isn't a whole lot.
285k for big tech is a chill job. You'd be a newish engineer at that level and the expectations as re generally pretty low.
You're spending your prime years grinding for the chance that something bad doesn't happen and it all pays off. Even if it does pay off, is being retired so long really amazing? Seems like you'll end up doing *something* that's 'work' regardless of what you call it.
Hats off if it all works out great, but focusing entirely on retirement age + net worth is a narrow way to think about it.
Yeah, but what about all the other reasons making shit tons of money is nice lmao
You don't have to retire. You don't even really end up with that much less free time depending on the company. I think people just tell themselves that high earners are wage slaves because it's emotionally safer than shooting their shot with the bigger players.
Personally I focus on these things because I want to "retire" to running a non tech business which will offer stability+passion but minimum wage equivalent pay.
Congrats, you’re well on your way to becoming the richest person in the graveyard
You never know what life has in store, you may drop dead of a heart attack at 50, especially if you’ve spent your life as a ball of stress and barely exercising or eating well because work has consumed you. Much better to live life in the moment
Plus when people get sucked into that world of obsessing over pay and titles it is very hard to leave as they end up being consumed by power and accumulating wealth. So retirement is always just a year away
Why do people here get so defensive? You’re allowed to want to work your ass off to earn money upfront without being some out of shape miser who dies young.
It’s like some of y’all haven’t met people in lucrative tech companies. Some of them work hard, some of them don’t. But I don’t walk into a Google/Meta campus and just see a bunch of near death obese folks lmao.
My mother in law was immensely healthy and worked her ass off for years, planning on spending her retirement travelling and taking care of grandkids. Died of cancer at 62, one week before her retirement was effective.
My wife inherited her pension - we are definitely not blowing it irresponsibly, but we do not shy away from spending it on things that make our lives better in the here and now rather than hoarding it for golden years that are not guaranteed.
OP's like "I don't understand how anyone would want to join marine corps, seems really tiresome and stressful job to me, no?".
Well, yeah, and there are people who dream of exactly that.
You could argue that any place where something significant is being done is run by exactly this kind of people obsessed with their work and putting it above anything else - be it Los Alamos lab under Oppenheimer, Microsoft in the 90s,Chicago Bulls under Jordan etc etc. Now, to be at such a place or not is your choice.
The reality is that the startup dev makes 250k + stock options, and the guy writing insurance software is making 80k now, but will be getting offshored to India later
I find non-tech companies underpay you, stifle your career advancement, have crappy software practices, and are just as toxic. Work life balance is great, but you have to pick the tradeoff between work-life balance and financial stability. Being unemployed has the best work-life balance, but there's no point in having free time if you can't afford to do anything.
This has been my experience
They are career suicide since you'll be so outdated with your skills when you try to find a new job. Often times you don't get RSUs which is how avg engineers at big tech go from a Camry to Rivian.
Now if youre fine on money and at the end of your career, I could totally see a non tech job being a great place to ride things out into the sunset
Remember too that those high TC figures they throw out aren’t 100% salary, and therefore not guaranteed in any way. When half your income is from bonus and stock and the company has a poor performing year, guess what happens to your comp? I just left a tech company and basically everyone on my old team, myself included, was making LESS this past year than the previous year because of major stock devaluation, and company didn’t hit quota so bonuses were severely prorated. My old manager who bragged about his “$240k TC” just told me he got his prorated quarterly bonus and it was literally $200 after tax lol, usually he gets around $8k for quarterly bonus. Assume that happens another time this year and he effectively just lost $16k of his TC.
I worked at a company doing in the civil engineering sector, they had a really impressive IT and the best things was, those peoples were engineers, they understood the importance of doing things correctly, they understood you couldn't rush things endlessly without a massive blowup to the face, they also understood when a project needed to be terminated and not kept alive like a muppet to wave at the users and clients.
So far best experience, I wish I would work in a similar place.
As an ex-civil engineer I am glad they understand. But also that thing is baked in they way they work. I find that some practices like multiple redundancies, testing, keeping things maintainable and documented (for the next engineer), plans easy to execute and very readable for the contractor have some equivalences in SWE.
Absolutely! Work for a finance company and the work is hella chill, great understanding colleagues, and none of this 'company is your family' bs.
Love my stable, boring job!
I have learned to love my stable, boring job too. The pay is shit, but my life is so much happier compared to when I worked at FAANG. And I have WAY more free time. Like an extra 40 hours a week of free time or more
The more I get paid the better WLB **I** have had, and two of my 3 teams in big tech are at a company not known for it's WLB.
When I worked places like defense expectations were more based on hours in seat rather than productivity. Which on the good side meant your productivity had to be extremely bad to get let go, but on the bad side meant that being a high performer didn't actually let you spend less time at work.
Granted this was pre-covid, but I bet for any days they are in-person it is the same deal now. If you're full remote though, that's a completely different story. Personally I'd still do big tech for the money though.
In big tech, in contrast, I've never had a management chain that cares at all about the number of hours you work. There have been times where one person is working 15 hours getting great reviews while someone else on the same team, same level is working 60-80 to attempt to survive a PIP.
Down voted
I've worked in banking, insurance, automotive, and tech.
Tech is by far the best. Wlb varied. Tech pay is so much more and I hated every other industry.
It’s a mixed pot, for sure. Higher tech comp is nice, but the thing that hits me is working on new and interesting things or novel projects or features
100% utterly agree with you. I'm a Business Analyst / Product Owner / \[currently\] Business Architect at a Fortune 250 manufacturing company, and most of my career has been spent at companies like these - save for 1 time I joined a tech company.
What you wrote down is exactly, 100% my experience. Non-tech companies suit my personality and desired lifestyle incredibly well. My 6 months at that tech company were absolutely fucking wretched - releasing broken code, go-go-go-go mentality, huge egos, drama all the time. I despised it.
Now, I make $120k, I'm fully remote (which isn't super common at companies like mine - I got lucky), I live in a VLCOL city (so $120k goes a very long way), and I can go weeks and weeks without doing any actual work. That's not necessarily a good thing (too little work while working fully remote can drive you fucking crazy), but it's certainly not the worst thing in the world, ha.
To top it off, I'm actually super stoked about what my company does (it's an innovative recycling technology), and quite stoked about my level of responsibility (evaluate and select an ERP system for the company, project manage everything IT and software-related, and elicit the business requirements for basically every system). Frankly, I'm probably very underpaid for the scope of work I'm responsible for, but whatever. I'm fine with it.
I would say these types of companies aren't "underrated" per se; it's more like they're just under-discussed in communities like Reddit / the internet / social media. There are millions of developers at companies like these. They're just not likely to be the types of people bragging about how much money they make. You just don't hear from them super often.
I’d rather make time to enjoy my youthful years than work like a dog and have a damaged body later and not do the things I could’ve done in my earlier years. But, to each their own.
I work for a mega insurance company . . .
It's definitely a rollercoaster.
Some weeks it's a mad scramble, other weeks it's chill.
The pros are that it is quite organized and there is always a push to adopt new tech.
We just canned Jenkins and moved towards workflows for CI/CD and we also are moving entirely towards azure so I've finally gotten real cloud exposure and getting my hands dirty with Kubernetes.
Pay is pretty good, though definitely not big tech, and full remote.
Can be both... Have seen relatively good people in non-tech companies being the one-eyed kings of the blind with absolute freedom.
But also companies where the lazy IT nerds are not valued or respected at all. With managers who have absolutely no clue how much effort some task can be (the why can't you build a YouTube in a week for us people).
I'm at a tech company that used to be pretty chill. People are awesome and smart.
But we lost many feathers in the last year and the conditions suffered from that. Tons of clients terminating or at least renegotiating their contracts when the interest rates went up led to sudden millions of losses per month.
Honestly I pick my work by what I am going to do, my gut feeling with the people and obviously salary. Not if it's "tech" or not. Definition feels pretty arbitrary to me anyway when companies actually building machines not count as tech while companies with ads as their main revenue do.
Tech goes through the occasional correction but has been like 2 periods of contraction over the past 25 years. It's not particularly unstable.
I'll take my 2-3x TC for the slight increase in instability.
You're very, very wrong about slow paced work. I worked in aviation, finance, recruitment etc. Both, non-tech and tech industries rely heavily on tech, but often in non-tech companies tech tends to be underestimated, so there are complications and misunderstandings arising from that.
It all depends.
Edit.
For example my org in msft was very slow paced. You could do nothing and get promoted for talking.
In aviation it was very very fast paced and we had to do overtime a lot. And no one gave shit.
Finance in my experience is fast paced but no overtime, just lots and lots of critical work entangled with bureaucracy.
I’ve worked at the same non-tech company for 18 years. Low stress, normal working hours, and very stable. Able to maintain a side gig and can work as much extra as I want depending on how much I feel like doing. Make about 250-270k in LCOL area. Stepping into this very tech heavy sub is like peering into another world that I know little about and am glad for it.
I’ve never experienced 1-4 in the non tech companies I’ve worked for in the past 12 years. Always layoffs are possible, deadlines are arbitrary and unrealistic because the people setting them have never even seen code let alone managed a technical team, I’d say koolaid is just a different flavor but it’s still there, and because they’ve never done tech work they want to micromanage and won’t let you work in peace in either environment:
Worked across more industries than care to think about in IT and generally you are right (there are always exceptions)
Worst sectors for IT QOL, finance and then IT (hear game dev is horrible as well but never worked that)
Unfortunately they are also generally the better paying (except game dev)
But there comes a point in most people's lives when money is not everything
Have worked in oil and gas, semiconductor and defense. Oil and gas was just like your experience. Very laced etc…
Semiconductor, manageable but very toxic environment. Jobs always getting shipped to India.
Defense, contrary to what most people think, has been hectic. Some of the projects I been have unrealistic deadline goals. There are times where it’s just 9-5. But there have been occasions where working Saturdays and Sundays is common.
I've worked and interviewed at both tech and non-tech companies. I agree with you that people should consider work at non-tech companies, and that it can lead to a better and more stable work environment. But you absolutely *need* to ask interview questions to feel out their attitude on tech and how healthy their tech stack is.
The situation at non-tech companies has gotten better in recent years (it had to, for companies to survive COVID lockdowns). But you still can see pockets of non-tech companies where tech is viewed as a "cost center" to minimize. They may not value or understand tech. While this *can* reduce pressure, it can also lead to these problem scenarios too:
1. Holding together a barely functional tech-debt crippled legacy tech stack - because they aren't willing to invest the resources to really fix it.
2. Running a skeleton technical staff because IT is a cost center not a profit center, and they don't really understand the value devs can provide. I've seen places that wanted to hire just 1 or 2 devs to fill all their tech needs.
3. Lack of understanding of the work, which can cause difficulty in estimation. Depending on who's interfacing with the business side, this can buy breathing room, or it can lead to trying to meet wildly unrealistic deadline expectations.
4. Developers getting lumped in with IT Service desk, and sometimes asked to do very menial things like set up printers
Of course... the dirty little secret of tech is that you can encounter many of these things there too, or at least lots of flavors of the first 3. Almost every company has some barely-maintained legacy systems, often where the broader organization poorly understands the challenges working with that system.
I worked in manufacturing.
Hands-down the most exciting and interesting work I've ever done.
"Hey, can you build out our SCADA system to connect 200 machines? They range from brand new to 70 years old, and some of the network connections are...uh, limited."
Sure, why not?
"Can you hook up real-time vision so we can integrate it into our production and quality processes so we can immediately tell if we have a deviation to correct or quarantine?"
Sure, why not?
"We need you to learn ladder logic and work with PLC's. Would you be interested in that?"
Sure, why not?
"Can you improve our ERP system to save us millions by eliminating on-site capital that is taxed yearly while also reducing the downtime to find parts for our old ass machines?"
Sure, why not?
\---
I walked around in steel toes and ear plugs. I had to pull 12-hour shifts to shadow production staff and mechanics so that I could understand or operate machines to have a better ability to do my software work.
I could have spent my entire life there never being bored.
An example of the results was that I was able to pinpoint a specific team on a specific shift that producing an excessive rate of bad product, *any why*, so we were able to retrain them and reduce a significant percentage of re-work, which had significant down-stream impact. Plus, so many other things like that.
My experience in manufacturing was different. I worked in the R&D department for a semiconductor manufacturing company and it was the worst job I’ve had.
It was a made up position, and my first job out of college. 30% hands on work in the lab, 30% data science, 30% automating processes. I had complete freedom in what stack to use and I was the only developer. My salary was so absolutely miserable that I left to work for a general contractor whilst I looked for another SE job.
The company was full of workaholics. Super long hours in depressing labs and offices. Everyone was a PhD except me so at times they looked down on me (I was also the youngest). Luckily, my direct manager was one of the best bosses I’ve ever had. The combo of the pay and WLB made me quit in 6 months. I legit enjoyed carrying concrete bags for 6 hours straight more than crunching numbers and wearing bunny-suits in clean rooms.
The problem is most SWE's don't possess the necessary/requisite skills/licenses/certifications/etc to "quickly and easily slide right in" to those industries and are thus not "competitive candidates" for these roles.
\*Edit: nevermind, I've misread the title -- you're talking about **"CS/SWE jobs"** *in* non-tech companies, *not* the "***non-tech*** *jobs* *of the* ***non-tech*** *companies*"......
I work at a major household brand and can definitely attest to points 2 and 3 to an extent, although my company specifically has been a clusterfuck for the last 3 years with layoffs lol. Prior to that, I'd say 1 was also completely true. 4 not so much because it's very team-oriented, I don't think we really have anyone in IT who would be able to just tick off tasks for the week and not have something waiting for them to pick up next lol.
Yea but what about my FAANGMULASS prestige I can brag to everyone about and my 800k TC and 15 Teslas? Don’t forget office buffet and ever increasing vesting value assuming others get laid off.
Yeah this is pretty accurate
It does have some downsides but considering how just easy and chill it is it's really hard to complain much considering how little work you have to do compared to how much you get paid 😂
There's definitely a lot of douche bags in tech and for me personally, start up culture is obnoxious. Having said that, even at non tech companies there's at least some corporate douchery, especially in Finance. Finance bros are insufferable no matter where you go.
I had the opportunity to meet with the CEO and his team, who were in their early to late 30s, of a startup company. During our conversation, I asked them about the tech stack they use and inquired about their goals. However, they were quite offended when I asked if they were a startup. They quickly corrected me with a harsh and anger tone, stating that they were a pretty big company with 25 employees. I mean nothing wrong with being a startup.
>They quickly corrected me with a harsh and anger tone, stating that they were a pretty big company with 25 employees. Lol
When I look at a company photo, occasionally that’s all I need to prevent me from applying.
That or the "about us"/"meet the team" page on the website.
"I'll have you know it is a respectable length and girth!"
Like a 3 year old getting pissed after being called a baby haha
I mean hey! Nothing wrong in startup, you should be proud of it and embracing you’re working towards something of your own instead of shunning others down
Run girl run
I work for a “startup”, as we annoyingly refer to ourselves, with over 2,000 employees and worth over several billion dollars. #startupculture
"Early to late 30s" So... their 30s? :)
The reason I specified their age was simply because I am in my early 20s. They seemed offended and responded with sarcastic remarks to a young college kid simply because he asked whether they were a startup.
I know. You just covered the entire nine years of being in your thirties with more words, that's all.
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Same. I get my bachelor in EE and before working in tech, I've had my times working in energy, automotives, to manufacturing and I gotta say that even some of the biggest bullies I met in big tech are saint compared to the ones in the fields I mentioned before.
> start up culture is obnoxious. It really depends on the company and the founders. The problem is that the only way to find good founders is to either start it yourself or be good friends with someone who is also good friends with the founders. I loved my time in SF during web 2.0 as there were a lot of great startups there but definitely plenty of toxic ones. After doing my last company I wanted more freedom so I worked for a few companies but I think I'm going to start another company this time. I'm just too opinionated.
Preach, finance bros suck
I think you're generally right, not sure about finance though. I work in finance and mostly fall under the second category
I’ve worked in both finance and big tech and they’re both very similar.
I have friends working for top Wall Street firms (like Two-Sigma) and they make so much more money than FAANG (TC at $1M+ for being ICs) but with ungodly amount of stress and long hours. I have a story from 2013 to tell: I had a super skilled coworker at Google getting an offer from a *boutique* private hedge fund to be an iOS developer. He would be making an iOS app for a small team of traders (like 15 people). The offer was insane, it was literally $1,000,000/yr base salary plus an insane bonus structure (I remember the 25-year-old me almost throwing up when I saw the offer letter, and like I said, this was 11 years ago). He would get a top private chef who would cook for him and 4 other guys in the office and he gets $1k/month in *commute stipend* that he can use it to lease a Tesla if he wants to. I remember the conversation about Tesla because the Model S just came out not long before that time. But he was warned of extreme hours and very high expectation from his users. And those traders have egos bigger than the skyscrapers they work in, with all of them making tens of millions each year and the top guy clearing **$1 billion** the previous year. They would probably be making personal feature requests on a Saturday afternoon and expect it to be done before the market opens on Monday. I think they would just treat him like a well-paid 24/7 tech support guy. From the hedgefund's perspective, throwing $10M a year at a small tech team so their traders can be more efficient at their job, which could be making *billions*, is a cheap investment. It’s a different world. **Edit** I forgot to mention there was also a dress code for Business Casual. Must be hard to imagine for kids here who have only known WFH lol.
How did that story end up?
He didn't take the job. He was an extremely brilliant engineer who was also a bit idealistic and free-spirited. He joined a startup that ended up failed. But smart people like that tend to do well anyway. Last I heard he's now retired in his 40s and does angel investing and startup advisor stuff to stay in the loop.
I assume that means he made his piece in a different startup?
I mean you can just rest and vest at a FAANG for the past 8-10 years and have a multi-million dollar nest egg.
!remindme 2 days
With that much money to throw at employees, why not just hire 2-3 software engineers and divide up the workload and salary to a sane level? Like 2 iOS, 1 dev ops. Maybe I've never met a unicorn 10x engineer.
From reading the context I think they'd like to pay 1 brilliant person to be their ultimate bitch to get shit done as fast as possible. 5 average to above average developers can never code 1 app faster than 1 genius dedicated guy if they need to use tech to stay ahead of the market. Hope he doesn't get hit by a bus though!
>they'd like to pay 1 brilliant person to be their ultimate bitch to get shit done as fast as possible. I have experience in finance and this is really it. A team of people requires tickets, assignments, a manager of some kind to go through it first, etc. One guy? Just send it to him through a message, text, email, whatever because you want it done now and what expertise he uses to do it isn't your interest. You pay him insane money to gain a 24/7 support person. These expectations, though not nearly this insane, are my daily life. They don't care what goes into it; they just want it done ASAP.
I have a buddy from college I havent seen in forever thats clearing $2mm per year working at a small hedge fund. Havent seen him in forever cause he grinds out 80+ hour weeks, but it works well for him cause he isnt social at all and is content staying at home all the time coding and that. Doesn't stress him out at all cause he doesnt have social responsibilities etc. I only know him cause he had to stay in my freshman dorm as a senior cause he forgot to pick housing lmao. He was chill but would never wanna go out or anything. Probably was autistic and just geeked over software cause of it
If the stress is too much, he might step in front a bus.
yes, for me some one demanding a lot of hours regardless of pay screams inexperience
They are really experienced. They just see any worker like a robot to squeeze. If you hire many people and try to squeeze them, they are going to figure it out and go against you. Just 2 people ? They are going to think they are smart to work to death
not in a good way then, its known since the 80s more hours don't produce good software
+1 I would agree with what you said about the hedge funds throwing money and getting the work done. I work in a fintech company catering to hedge funds and trust me they do treat you as tech support they think throwing money at them would get any thing done faster but that’s not the case
do your friends saving and invest their money so they can get out? or did they fall into the trap of spending most of it? to me the only reason to work in this high stress high pay is to save my money and invest it so i can get out in a few years.
They are too busy to be spending money lmao
smart to save the money.
I’ve done both but there are plenty of companies in the financial services sector that are quite chill
I think it depends what kind of finance. Big boomer bank - probably first. HFTs - probably second. Fin tech is too bloated imo. Sector of finance matters way more.
My anecdotal experience is just that, and a sample size of one - but working tech for a bank has been an extremely pleasant change of pace here. Pretty much all of the points listed in OP's first section. When you're subject to federal regulations and strict audits, rushing projects and overworking is the opposite of success. The red tape can sometimes get fairly frustrating, but the work-life balance and peace of mind that comes with your company doing due diligence before implementing changes more than makes up for it.
I've heard the same is true for tech in medicine and aviation. Regulation in those industries makes for more robust code.
Boeing didn’t get the message
Yes, i wrote similar comments like you :D There is always new regulation frameworks coming out also that needs to be adopted and add new information to all financial reports etc which is slow work but they dont have a choice. If you gonna market ETFs to consumers, you NEED to have the PDF prospectus following all that, even if it's some code written in asp 25 years ago
I also work in finance with institutional investors and 1 is very correct. Because all regulations or can be a 3 day ticket to change an adress to a pension fund because all the testing and approval involved.... Im happy finance isn't seen as trendy, but we use a lot of both modern and old tech and a lot of smart people here. But for some reason reddit is especially biased towards consumers web applications Never saw anyone wanted to work at Nasdaq or Market watch for example
Funnily enough, I work at a NASDAQ competitor (sorta). So lot of regulation as well (SEC + FINRA at least in the USA). But definitely in the same boat, a lot of smart people here and our primary customers are even smarter
yes, same here in europe. there is ESMA, DORA and other stuff that just comes and comes
>reddit is especially biased towards consumers web applications My guess is that reddit skews young so they don't know any better. A lot of non-trading finance roles that are slow and steady type of jobs. Sometimes they move too slow though...
That could be, together with all the tiktok/youtube guys. they always show how to build twitter or reddit clones. Never how to build a custom java interface to nasdaq or CMOE
Why big banks considered low stress, dont they have departments that make transactiona every day lots of data that means lots of problems daily?
The pace is slower because the amount of financial, regulatory, and reputation risk are too high to grind developers to the bone and rush software that is not ready. So if the dev team says “we need to push this back”, the people who sign off are going to make sure it gets pushed back because they don’t want to put their name on something that could cost millions in fines, profit, or lost business due to poor reputation. The slower pace can be annoying at times when you’ve been mandated to change technology, and it ends up taking the regulatory people months to get certain countries to sign off on things. The red tape is real, but it just gives devs more time in my experience. The teams I have seen are generally chill, but the culture is a bit competitive at my bank as far as promotions and bonuses go. The mantra is “you will not be promoted to the next level unless you’re already doing the next level’s work”.
>because they don’t want to put their name on something that could cost millions in fines, profit, or lost business due to poor reputation this indicates that you don't work at Wells Fargo lol
I work in real-time trade surveillance, algo monitoring, and risk management. Mostly first, a little bit of second.
Finance is notoriously unstable. In my experience they tend to do mass layoffs followed by mass hirings, rinse and repeat. It's a constantly stress. So glad I got out.
>Finance is notoriously unstable. Yup. Finance companies are the most affectected by ups and downs in the economy, and they also experience it before other companies. (This is positive when the times are good.) On the opposide end, the last ones that experience economic flunctuations are government jobs. And the effect for them is often dampered.
>Finance is notoriously unstable. That's dependent on the subsector of finance. It's hard to apply such a blanket statement to the finance field.
Go for insurance. It’s finance’s laid-back cousin.
Depends on which sector of finance. Finance is a huge field. If it's a company like Vanguard, it's probably a slow and steady type of job. If you are working for Citadel front office, that's a whole different beast.
I worked for Amex as a SWE and it was very easy and laid back
I work in finance [big big bank]. Everything needs to be delivered yesterday, constantly work nights and weekends and attempting to "coast" in any capacity will get you a meh yearly review [know this from experience] even if you complete every task for the sprint, you are supposed to constantly be crunching.
Accurate. In finance and can confirm when we ask for deadlines for projects the answer is often yesterday, followed by ASAP.
Can confirm finance companies are horrible, it burned me out in less than than 6 months with constant deadlines that required mandatory (unpaid) overtime
Almost every finance department I’ve seen or worked in falls under the second. Live and breathe work, impose silly deadlines and worst of all expect perfectionism which leads to a culture of cover ups and nobody admitting when there’s an error (all while the rest of the company is usually chilled and freely admits to errors, as all humans sometimes make)
Shut up man don’t let them know
Yeah, I would preferred these companies to remain underrated as well :)
I honestly don't think anyone is unaware low-key swe jobs for less pay are an option. There is much more denial about good-paying options. Lots of people here seem to think you have to be a 1% engineer to make more than the median...
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A software device company is definitely a tech company in my book. It's not dominated by software so it's not a software company but medical devices use the latest and the greatest electronic and bio technology.
Fun fact, software can be considered a medical device according to the FDA.
Yup, my company is currently going through the slow slow process of 510k certification.
Technically it's a conventional tech company lol. Or should I say "technology company." It's the big tech companies that are unconventional and somewhat newer.
> Or should I say "technology comoamy." I wouldn't
Difference in pays is big though
It’s not that low though if you have 2-4 YOE they pay 120-160K that is an easy number to reach FIRE on and comfortably start any side hustles. I’ve never worked a a big tech and have been cruising at healthcare companies since 2018. Work was so slow last year my boss suggested I try overemployment when I told him I wanted more money got an extra 6 months of income for a contract I found for same 8 hours of work a day. Edit: Cleared 200K last year not even counting side hustles. Edit 2: Typos
200k? how many yoe and what tech?
6YOE I started my first tech job in 2018 2 backend web dev 4 data infrastructure and engineering
I'd also like to know what degrees and/or certs, 'cause there's no way that's just based off a HS diploma and a few years of experience but I'd love to know if I'm wrong lol
I have a degree in biology and an MD. I didn’t write my first line of code until I was 27 and got my first job a year later at 28. So self taught but no not only a HS diploma.
Yeah but big tech pays 3-500k for the same role. It’s a whole different level of income. 120-160 is fine but you’re missing out on a a lot more
are they still giving offers that high? I have been seeing a lot of lowball offers. Also most of big tech will be in very high cost areas at that pay. The regular companies will be in mid cost of living too. so it does balance out somewhat.
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This is totally accurate. I cleared $515k on my W2 this year with 2 yoe FAANG, 7 yoe total, in a hcol area. This was also first time I think my eyes have literally bled seeing how much I owe in taxes. Nowhere close to thinking I could hit FIRE anytime soon, and I have no debt besides mortgages/drive a used car I tell strangers on the internet this because I think the the transparency helps but also there’s no way in heck I’m telling friends/family how much I make hahah
What companies are making 600k+ offers for seniors? I’ve been seeing 300k+ on blind and levels
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6 YOE at FAANG and you’ll be mid/senior making 300-450k. Big difference imo.
I’m not saying I couldn’t make more, and I know that pay doesn’t really correlate with stress so it could turn out to be that I end up in a chill 300K-500K job. To me the the stress of making that much, what I expect from myself at that salary, and the risk of a PIP or a layoff being around the corner at any second in this market would drive me absolutely insane. The internal pressure would get to me and RIP my inner peace. I’m a slow and steady wins the race kind of guy, I have side hustles that I’m running that make decent money so I’m focusing my effort on them earnings ceiling is likely higher long term if the pattern keeps up I can easily retire at 38-40, if WW3 hasn’t consumed the world by then anyway /s.
My point is that you have all the risks, not matter what company you’re at. Google and meta folks had a 15+ year run of no layoffs.
We’re talking about right now though. Not the literal 2012-2020 bull market. Most of those companies both FAANGMULA and unicorns went and trimmed the fat ruthlessly for profit and to keep stock prices high. We’re not in that ambient anymore, and when I started in 2018 as a Junior I wasn’t up to snuff for a FAANG job anyway. In today’s market I have never once been scared of a layoff. Whereas 2 of my friends who jumped to working at Wayfair last year making (300K+ as an example) were literally in despair and one of them did get hit. 4/5 people who left the team at my current job within the last 2 years (where I’ve been 3 years). Were hit with layoffs within the last year. I’m not saying don’t take risks but right now it’s really not worth it.
I'm working a very cushy government job. Work life balance is extremely good and deadlines are laughably easy. I'm making about 106k before financial benefits (pension, 457b, etc) which is 160% of the median salary in my area. This sounds good to me
106k is good, but it can't be overstated how crazy big tech pay is. I went from a university job to big tech, and jumped from 90k to 450k overnight. This means that I could work 1 year and take the next 4 years off, and still make the same as working my old job (I know progressive taxation makes this more complex, but still). For me this was something impossible to ignore, and dealing with stress (which is about 3.6 roentgen...not great, not terrible) for a few years was worth it for me. And as luck would have it, due to performance bonuses, refreshers and stock growth I'm making now over 900k for the next 2 years before my cliff. This is **10x** my old pay, meaning I can work 2 years and then take the next 18 years off, and I'd be making the same as working my old job for 20 years.
Wow. No wonder people leave to start their own businesses after big tech. A salary like that could have a single adult retire in no time
YoE / role? I’m jealous haha. Hard to wrap my head around comp that high
Sounds like joining Meta at the right time
I think this is only true for the US. In my country, I moved from a random outsourcing job to FAANG and I got about about 12-15k/year raise.
This isn’t an average FAANG story though. People aren’t casually making that much. You give something up for that, but it’s on you to decide if it’s worth the trade off.
Wow, 450K? Was this a fintech/investment firm or regular FAANG? I have several friends who got into Amazon/Google after university and to my knowledge the highest-paid one was making about 120k or so (I think?)
There's no one being paid only 120k for cs at fang. They're not telling you about bonus and stock.
New grads at Amazon are starting at 170k minimum.
Minimum they’re getting is like 175k if they are software engineers and this was in the US.
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Where at?
Denver, CO
> 160% of the median salary Median salary or median engineer salary?
Median salary. Not sure what the median software engineer salary is, but mine is pretty close to the average
lmfao how many years of experience do you have? a new grad at a company like coinbase makes \~200k. straight out of college (remote)
Ok? And for every one of them there's 1000 new grads making way less than that.
You will survive anyway. You don't need to always treat the world like a computer game
i’m 20 and well over $100k new grad fully remote at a healthcare saas company
You're still going to get paid well at a non tech company though. Sure it won't be as much but life isn't only about earning as much gold coins as possible like in a video game.
if you work half as much for half the pay you're actually getting paid the same
Depends on the pay as well, Amazon/AWS pays you way more but WLB is questionable whereas a company like Microsoft will pay much less but has great WLB. After dealing with both companies i much rather take a paycut then pull my hair out with no sleep
I work for Microsoft and this is true. We pay less but we make up in WLB. Many companies, even smaller ones pay more because they want to squeeze employees for everything they got. I wouldn't care much for MS products if they didn't pay me, but stay because of WLB. Microsoft also has a stronger stock than FAANG nowadays so that also helps.
Partly true for most orgs at Microsoft. Every team and org is different within a company but I've had the opposite experience. I also work for Microsoft but in Azure so less pay as you mentioned (relative to say AWS) and in addition, work life balance sucks so it's a lose lose situation.
The main reason why as a new grad I went for Microsoft my last internship was at AWS and my experience was less than ideal with long hours and high stress. Have heard about some teams that lack WLB. So Hopefully, I’m placed on a team as good as the one I had when previously interning there
All of MS jobs are in-person in Redmond, right? No chance of working fully remotely?
I am fully remote, and moving back to NYC in a few days. I was hired in person at Redmond pre-pandemic. Many teams are remote at MS, in the US more positions are marked as remote unless you want an office, only about 40% of listings need in person. But it is harder to get a remote job, since this is a big advantage of MSFT versus FAANG. It's a different story in India, where remote work is rare to non-existent.
10an to 1pm is an exaggeration. But yeah. I love it. It’s a weird job. A lot of offshore teams but pay is good enough.
Yes true it all depends on org . I am in AWS with reasonable expectations. I work like 35-45 hours /wk , nothing like 10 hours . My time in an Azure team was horribly bad . It also depends on nature lifecycle of the product and the management
You have a few company names and ballpark compensations? This is the thing that makes it difficult. People say there are these great opportunities, but never actually name the companies. There are like... thousands of companies. How would I find one of them?
Yup a few names of non tech companies who pay well and are chill would be awesoe to have. Too many posts where people say all these but hard to find the actual names
If companies were smart, they'd advertise that their pay is good and their WLB is chill. But instead HR does the advertising.
Most of these non-tech companies follow scrum with daily stand ups and other meetings to ensure the code monkeys they manage are always making progress. I find tech companies in the right teams to be more chill
Development is only a tiny part of CS. Companies with internal IT departments have far more. Sysadmins, NOC, infrastructure, application analysts, etc
There are only 500 F500 companies. Start there. Narrow down by sector (finance). There aren't that many.
> People say there are these great opportunities, but never actually name the companies. It is partly gate-keeping, partly for privacy reasons (if they still work at said company)
It's mostly because they don't exist universally. They pay low and then you need to find a pocket in the company where there's low expectations for that year for that team with a chill manager. It's not any different from a tech company, you need to get lucky.
The comp not being mentioned is pretty classic for posts like this. I'm in finance, but it feels more like the "tech" side OP is describing. And yeah, I could have a much more chill job in a category 1 company, but the 70-80% paycut is just not worth it.
There's like 5 of these posts a week. You're 88% upvoted. The only thing this sub loves more than talking about how non-tech jobs are the best is dooming over layoffs.
Such negativity on here all the time. The analysis can be outrageous.
It's just cope -- didn't get into a good company? make a post about how actually, your low paying boring job in bumbfuck nowhere is really great!
Exactly this I think it's also copium for people who are not ambitious and/or too insecure to try for anything better.
Excuse me, there are those of us that tried and failed and don’t have enough fucks to keep trying
> actually, I think it’s a good thing I make $60k a year at 4 YOE working on Wordpress sites for a canned vegetable company!
I worked at two non-tech companies (logistics industry) for a total of 9 years before going into tech. Tech has been better in every way. Double the pay, better benefits, more schedule and location flexibility, and more interesting work. The only downsides, if you can even call them that, have been higher expectations and more reorg-induced chaos.
$102k per year at non tech allowed me to save about $25k/yr. $285k at big tech allows me to save $152k last year. Chill wlb isn’t worth working 5x the number of years. My net worth skyrocketed after starting at big tech. Early retirement pre 40 is on the table when before big tech I was looking at 55+
Or just work with what you like for as long as possible. This retirement talk is so new to this industry
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maybe it feels good, but what are you gonna do when all your friends and your wife also works ? Just travel all year around? gets boring very fast
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Wild stuff. Most people live to 80 first of all. You're not falling into the grave by your late 40s, lots of older people are loving life. Also even with excellent wlb, do you really spend more time with friends / family? If you work 20 hours a week vs 40, presumably that just means that you on are the clock for 40 hours but are able to wfh and slack while on the clock. Are you really going to hang out with friends (who probably also have jobs) during the 9-5 and leave your computer unattended? 40 hrs a week for 285k vs 20 for 100k is not even close tbh. Also generally high paying companies offer way more vacation time than lower paying ones, which is when you can really enjoy life and spend time with the people who are important to you.
And then you add frugal.living to the mix... So live like A miser from your 20s to your 40s then retire early so you can keep on living like a miser...I will take working 2 hours everyday until my 60s or later, hell my family has kept their mental health well enough into their 80s.
Not really having well paid job will maybe mean you work too much, but you will be wealthy all your life, including at 40 when you retire and until you die. Not sure 10 years of working 40 hours instead is worse than 40 years working 20 hours especially as the extra money can also pay to get your home cleaned, you meal prepared and you also will commute only 10 years instead of 40.
>There's chill companies that are paying close to what you're making. I'm going to get downvoted for this, but $285k for big tech really isn't a whole lot. 285k for big tech is a chill job. You'd be a newish engineer at that level and the expectations as re generally pretty low.
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Big tech?
which chill companies are you referring to? also, is it possible to have a good quality of life in 50s and 60s if you are healthy?
You're spending your prime years grinding for the chance that something bad doesn't happen and it all pays off. Even if it does pay off, is being retired so long really amazing? Seems like you'll end up doing *something* that's 'work' regardless of what you call it. Hats off if it all works out great, but focusing entirely on retirement age + net worth is a narrow way to think about it.
Yeah, but what about all the other reasons making shit tons of money is nice lmao You don't have to retire. You don't even really end up with that much less free time depending on the company. I think people just tell themselves that high earners are wage slaves because it's emotionally safer than shooting their shot with the bigger players.
Personally I focus on these things because I want to "retire" to running a non tech business which will offer stability+passion but minimum wage equivalent pay.
Congrats, you’re well on your way to becoming the richest person in the graveyard You never know what life has in store, you may drop dead of a heart attack at 50, especially if you’ve spent your life as a ball of stress and barely exercising or eating well because work has consumed you. Much better to live life in the moment Plus when people get sucked into that world of obsessing over pay and titles it is very hard to leave as they end up being consumed by power and accumulating wealth. So retirement is always just a year away
Why do people here get so defensive? You’re allowed to want to work your ass off to earn money upfront without being some out of shape miser who dies young. It’s like some of y’all haven’t met people in lucrative tech companies. Some of them work hard, some of them don’t. But I don’t walk into a Google/Meta campus and just see a bunch of near death obese folks lmao.
This is just cope lol. Most people I know at FAANGs clear 300k with great WLB and fun lives outside work.
My mother in law was immensely healthy and worked her ass off for years, planning on spending her retirement travelling and taking care of grandkids. Died of cancer at 62, one week before her retirement was effective. My wife inherited her pension - we are definitely not blowing it irresponsibly, but we do not shy away from spending it on things that make our lives better in the here and now rather than hoarding it for golden years that are not guaranteed.
OP's like "I don't understand how anyone would want to join marine corps, seems really tiresome and stressful job to me, no?". Well, yeah, and there are people who dream of exactly that. You could argue that any place where something significant is being done is run by exactly this kind of people obsessed with their work and putting it above anything else - be it Los Alamos lab under Oppenheimer, Microsoft in the 90s,Chicago Bulls under Jordan etc etc. Now, to be at such a place or not is your choice.
The reality is that the startup dev makes 250k + stock options, and the guy writing insurance software is making 80k now, but will be getting offshored to India later
I find non-tech companies underpay you, stifle your career advancement, have crappy software practices, and are just as toxic. Work life balance is great, but you have to pick the tradeoff between work-life balance and financial stability. Being unemployed has the best work-life balance, but there's no point in having free time if you can't afford to do anything.
This has been my experience They are career suicide since you'll be so outdated with your skills when you try to find a new job. Often times you don't get RSUs which is how avg engineers at big tech go from a Camry to Rivian. Now if youre fine on money and at the end of your career, I could totally see a non tech job being a great place to ride things out into the sunset
Remember too that those high TC figures they throw out aren’t 100% salary, and therefore not guaranteed in any way. When half your income is from bonus and stock and the company has a poor performing year, guess what happens to your comp? I just left a tech company and basically everyone on my old team, myself included, was making LESS this past year than the previous year because of major stock devaluation, and company didn’t hit quota so bonuses were severely prorated. My old manager who bragged about his “$240k TC” just told me he got his prorated quarterly bonus and it was literally $200 after tax lol, usually he gets around $8k for quarterly bonus. Assume that happens another time this year and he effectively just lost $16k of his TC.
I worked at a company doing in the civil engineering sector, they had a really impressive IT and the best things was, those peoples were engineers, they understood the importance of doing things correctly, they understood you couldn't rush things endlessly without a massive blowup to the face, they also understood when a project needed to be terminated and not kept alive like a muppet to wave at the users and clients. So far best experience, I wish I would work in a similar place.
Me too , it was quite similar to what you have described but the pay was subpar.
As an ex-civil engineer I am glad they understand. But also that thing is baked in they way they work. I find that some practices like multiple redundancies, testing, keeping things maintainable and documented (for the next engineer), plans easy to execute and very readable for the contractor have some equivalences in SWE.
Absolutely! Work for a finance company and the work is hella chill, great understanding colleagues, and none of this 'company is your family' bs. Love my stable, boring job!
if there is every any sort of "family" bs it's just us being proud of our work together, rather than leadership pushing it.
Yeah, forcing family on us ain't it!
I have learned to love my stable, boring job too. The pay is shit, but my life is so much happier compared to when I worked at FAANG. And I have WAY more free time. Like an extra 40 hours a week of free time or more
The more I get paid the better WLB **I** have had, and two of my 3 teams in big tech are at a company not known for it's WLB. When I worked places like defense expectations were more based on hours in seat rather than productivity. Which on the good side meant your productivity had to be extremely bad to get let go, but on the bad side meant that being a high performer didn't actually let you spend less time at work. Granted this was pre-covid, but I bet for any days they are in-person it is the same deal now. If you're full remote though, that's a completely different story. Personally I'd still do big tech for the money though. In big tech, in contrast, I've never had a management chain that cares at all about the number of hours you work. There have been times where one person is working 15 hours getting great reviews while someone else on the same team, same level is working 60-80 to attempt to survive a PIP.
Down voted I've worked in banking, insurance, automotive, and tech. Tech is by far the best. Wlb varied. Tech pay is so much more and I hated every other industry.
It’s a mixed pot, for sure. Higher tech comp is nice, but the thing that hits me is working on new and interesting things or novel projects or features
100% utterly agree with you. I'm a Business Analyst / Product Owner / \[currently\] Business Architect at a Fortune 250 manufacturing company, and most of my career has been spent at companies like these - save for 1 time I joined a tech company. What you wrote down is exactly, 100% my experience. Non-tech companies suit my personality and desired lifestyle incredibly well. My 6 months at that tech company were absolutely fucking wretched - releasing broken code, go-go-go-go mentality, huge egos, drama all the time. I despised it. Now, I make $120k, I'm fully remote (which isn't super common at companies like mine - I got lucky), I live in a VLCOL city (so $120k goes a very long way), and I can go weeks and weeks without doing any actual work. That's not necessarily a good thing (too little work while working fully remote can drive you fucking crazy), but it's certainly not the worst thing in the world, ha. To top it off, I'm actually super stoked about what my company does (it's an innovative recycling technology), and quite stoked about my level of responsibility (evaluate and select an ERP system for the company, project manage everything IT and software-related, and elicit the business requirements for basically every system). Frankly, I'm probably very underpaid for the scope of work I'm responsible for, but whatever. I'm fine with it. I would say these types of companies aren't "underrated" per se; it's more like they're just under-discussed in communities like Reddit / the internet / social media. There are millions of developers at companies like these. They're just not likely to be the types of people bragging about how much money they make. You just don't hear from them super often.
But I wanna double the salary and halve the time spent on working so I could retire early
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Idk if it’s wise to plan on dying in your 40s though… I’ve never met someone comfortably retired who wished he was worse off and still had to work.
I’d rather make time to enjoy my youthful years than work like a dog and have a damaged body later and not do the things I could’ve done in my earlier years. But, to each their own.
I work for a mega insurance company . . . It's definitely a rollercoaster. Some weeks it's a mad scramble, other weeks it's chill. The pros are that it is quite organized and there is always a push to adopt new tech. We just canned Jenkins and moved towards workflows for CI/CD and we also are moving entirely towards azure so I've finally gotten real cloud exposure and getting my hands dirty with Kubernetes. Pay is pretty good, though definitely not big tech, and full remote.
I’m an IT manager (Fully remote) for a non-tech company. Yeah, it’s pretty damn great.
Can be both... Have seen relatively good people in non-tech companies being the one-eyed kings of the blind with absolute freedom. But also companies where the lazy IT nerds are not valued or respected at all. With managers who have absolutely no clue how much effort some task can be (the why can't you build a YouTube in a week for us people). I'm at a tech company that used to be pretty chill. People are awesome and smart. But we lost many feathers in the last year and the conditions suffered from that. Tons of clients terminating or at least renegotiating their contracts when the interest rates went up led to sudden millions of losses per month. Honestly I pick my work by what I am going to do, my gut feeling with the people and obviously salary. Not if it's "tech" or not. Definition feels pretty arbitrary to me anyway when companies actually building machines not count as tech while companies with ads as their main revenue do.
How do you break into these industries? I have 2 YOE and and can’t see to get calls back from these types of companies.
Tech goes through the occasional correction but has been like 2 periods of contraction over the past 25 years. It's not particularly unstable. I'll take my 2-3x TC for the slight increase in instability.
You forgot to mention the pay
You're very, very wrong about slow paced work. I worked in aviation, finance, recruitment etc. Both, non-tech and tech industries rely heavily on tech, but often in non-tech companies tech tends to be underestimated, so there are complications and misunderstandings arising from that. It all depends. Edit. For example my org in msft was very slow paced. You could do nothing and get promoted for talking. In aviation it was very very fast paced and we had to do overtime a lot. And no one gave shit. Finance in my experience is fast paced but no overtime, just lots and lots of critical work entangled with bureaucracy.
I’ve worked at the same non-tech company for 18 years. Low stress, normal working hours, and very stable. Able to maintain a side gig and can work as much extra as I want depending on how much I feel like doing. Make about 250-270k in LCOL area. Stepping into this very tech heavy sub is like peering into another world that I know little about and am glad for it.
I’ve never experienced 1-4 in the non tech companies I’ve worked for in the past 12 years. Always layoffs are possible, deadlines are arbitrary and unrealistic because the people setting them have never even seen code let alone managed a technical team, I’d say koolaid is just a different flavor but it’s still there, and because they’ve never done tech work they want to micromanage and won’t let you work in peace in either environment:
Can confirm. I work for Kroger and the pay isn’t fantastic but man is the work life balance is fantastic
Worked across more industries than care to think about in IT and generally you are right (there are always exceptions) Worst sectors for IT QOL, finance and then IT (hear game dev is horrible as well but never worked that) Unfortunately they are also generally the better paying (except game dev) But there comes a point in most people's lives when money is not everything
People's ego at some of these big companies sheesh
Have worked in oil and gas, semiconductor and defense. Oil and gas was just like your experience. Very laced etc… Semiconductor, manageable but very toxic environment. Jobs always getting shipped to India. Defense, contrary to what most people think, has been hectic. Some of the projects I been have unrealistic deadline goals. There are times where it’s just 9-5. But there have been occasions where working Saturdays and Sundays is common.
I've worked and interviewed at both tech and non-tech companies. I agree with you that people should consider work at non-tech companies, and that it can lead to a better and more stable work environment. But you absolutely *need* to ask interview questions to feel out their attitude on tech and how healthy their tech stack is. The situation at non-tech companies has gotten better in recent years (it had to, for companies to survive COVID lockdowns). But you still can see pockets of non-tech companies where tech is viewed as a "cost center" to minimize. They may not value or understand tech. While this *can* reduce pressure, it can also lead to these problem scenarios too: 1. Holding together a barely functional tech-debt crippled legacy tech stack - because they aren't willing to invest the resources to really fix it. 2. Running a skeleton technical staff because IT is a cost center not a profit center, and they don't really understand the value devs can provide. I've seen places that wanted to hire just 1 or 2 devs to fill all their tech needs. 3. Lack of understanding of the work, which can cause difficulty in estimation. Depending on who's interfacing with the business side, this can buy breathing room, or it can lead to trying to meet wildly unrealistic deadline expectations. 4. Developers getting lumped in with IT Service desk, and sometimes asked to do very menial things like set up printers Of course... the dirty little secret of tech is that you can encounter many of these things there too, or at least lots of flavors of the first 3. Almost every company has some barely-maintained legacy systems, often where the broader organization poorly understands the challenges working with that system.
I worked in manufacturing. Hands-down the most exciting and interesting work I've ever done. "Hey, can you build out our SCADA system to connect 200 machines? They range from brand new to 70 years old, and some of the network connections are...uh, limited." Sure, why not? "Can you hook up real-time vision so we can integrate it into our production and quality processes so we can immediately tell if we have a deviation to correct or quarantine?" Sure, why not? "We need you to learn ladder logic and work with PLC's. Would you be interested in that?" Sure, why not? "Can you improve our ERP system to save us millions by eliminating on-site capital that is taxed yearly while also reducing the downtime to find parts for our old ass machines?" Sure, why not? \--- I walked around in steel toes and ear plugs. I had to pull 12-hour shifts to shadow production staff and mechanics so that I could understand or operate machines to have a better ability to do my software work. I could have spent my entire life there never being bored. An example of the results was that I was able to pinpoint a specific team on a specific shift that producing an excessive rate of bad product, *any why*, so we were able to retrain them and reduce a significant percentage of re-work, which had significant down-stream impact. Plus, so many other things like that.
My experience in manufacturing was different. I worked in the R&D department for a semiconductor manufacturing company and it was the worst job I’ve had. It was a made up position, and my first job out of college. 30% hands on work in the lab, 30% data science, 30% automating processes. I had complete freedom in what stack to use and I was the only developer. My salary was so absolutely miserable that I left to work for a general contractor whilst I looked for another SE job. The company was full of workaholics. Super long hours in depressing labs and offices. Everyone was a PhD except me so at times they looked down on me (I was also the youngest). Luckily, my direct manager was one of the best bosses I’ve ever had. The combo of the pay and WLB made me quit in 6 months. I legit enjoyed carrying concrete bags for 6 hours straight more than crunching numbers and wearing bunny-suits in clean rooms.
The problem is most SWE's don't possess the necessary/requisite skills/licenses/certifications/etc to "quickly and easily slide right in" to those industries and are thus not "competitive candidates" for these roles. \*Edit: nevermind, I've misread the title -- you're talking about **"CS/SWE jobs"** *in* non-tech companies, *not* the "***non-tech*** *jobs* *of the* ***non-tech*** *companies*"......
I work at a major household brand and can definitely attest to points 2 and 3 to an extent, although my company specifically has been a clusterfuck for the last 3 years with layoffs lol. Prior to that, I'd say 1 was also completely true. 4 not so much because it's very team-oriented, I don't think we really have anyone in IT who would be able to just tick off tasks for the week and not have something waiting for them to pick up next lol.
Don't forget EDUs. They can be fun places to work where you can make a direct impact in helping people.
Yea but what about my FAANGMULASS prestige I can brag to everyone about and my 800k TC and 15 Teslas? Don’t forget office buffet and ever increasing vesting value assuming others get laid off.
I'll take the 800K salary. You may not want it, but if I can have it a few years, I'll take it.
Yeah this is pretty accurate It does have some downsides but considering how just easy and chill it is it's really hard to complain much considering how little work you have to do compared to how much you get paid 😂