<story><title>Ask HN: Anyone else feel trapped in FANG? How did you get out?</title><text>Hi HN,&lt;p&gt;I’ve been working at a FANG for 2 years now and I feel like my career goals and interests are not aligned with where I’m at. Outside of my FANG I was a go-getter who loves learning new things and taking on hard problems. Inside my company I have tried over the past 2 years to propose different solutions to hard problems and I just get blown off.&lt;p&gt;I’m good at my job I already got promoted in 1 year and am moving up. I am making more money than I expected, but at work I’m not able to express myself creatively or do things outside the box. I just get assigned straightforward work from my manager that the product managers and “leadership” assign to our team with barely any input on the overall project or ability to propose new projects.&lt;p&gt;I feel like if I stay here I will just get stuck in a cycle of never accomplishing my goals but I’m scared to move teams or companies or build a startup because I have a good manager, a good comp and my job isn’t that stressful.&lt;p&gt;I could become more involved at work in building paper reading groups or other kinds of side projects to creatively express myself at work but I don’t want to be the person whose life revolves around their FANG.&lt;p&gt;Anyone else feel like this? What did you do?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>quacked</author><text>My advice would be to put your head down, live like a monk, and save&amp;#x2F;invest money. Get promoted as far as you can, but don&amp;#x27;t burn yourself out. If you see yourself having a family someday, spend your free time on finding a spouse.&lt;p&gt;Five years in, you&amp;#x27;ll have a huge pile of cash and an insane chunk on your resume that will almost certainly guarantee you an interview wherever you want. Once you hit that point, take some time off and do literally anything. Start a startup, be a contractor, get a new degree.&lt;p&gt;You have stumbled onto the sort of prosperity (easy low-stress job) that 99.95% of the world literally dreams about. To throw it away because you&amp;#x27;re not &amp;quot;creatively expressing yourself&amp;quot; would be foolish.&lt;p&gt;This advice doesn&amp;#x27;t apply if you&amp;#x27;re a relentlessly competitive founder type like Gates or Bezons, but if you were of that mentality, I doubt you&amp;#x27;d be having the same troubles you are.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>enra</author><text>The downside of this advice is while you make money and your experience will look good on the resume, you might not have learned that much in the end and in some ways wasted your time and life.&lt;p&gt;Also if you want to go back to earlier stage companies or different places than FAANG, the FAANG experience is not some golden ticket, but can be also a potential flag to those who know how things work. Basically a flag to verify can this person still build things outside of bigco or are they just a professional coaster at this point. It can be surprising to people that even though you did work at Facebook or Google, you are not automatically a good fit for some other company.&lt;p&gt;My personal way of thinking has been always to join companies or pick jobs where I learn and that pushes me in some way, especially while I&amp;#x27;m still young. I also did work at FAANG but the main thing I learned was how manage politics. Also within FAANG there is always teams or roles where you are actually challenged but majority of the roles are fairly easy.&lt;p&gt;Ideally at each role you learn something that improves and expands your skills. Each role prepares you for your next role or the step you want to take in your career. Taking home a paycheck and being a professional coaster doesn&amp;#x27;t help you make progress or make your life interesting (not to say that work is all your life but it is part of it).</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Anyone else feel trapped in FANG? How did you get out?</title><text>Hi HN,&lt;p&gt;I’ve been working at a FANG for 2 years now and I feel like my career goals and interests are not aligned with where I’m at. Outside of my FANG I was a go-getter who loves learning new things and taking on hard problems. Inside my company I have tried over the past 2 years to propose different solutions to hard problems and I just get blown off.&lt;p&gt;I’m good at my job I already got promoted in 1 year and am moving up. I am making more money than I expected, but at work I’m not able to express myself creatively or do things outside the box. I just get assigned straightforward work from my manager that the product managers and “leadership” assign to our team with barely any input on the overall project or ability to propose new projects.&lt;p&gt;I feel like if I stay here I will just get stuck in a cycle of never accomplishing my goals but I’m scared to move teams or companies or build a startup because I have a good manager, a good comp and my job isn’t that stressful.&lt;p&gt;I could become more involved at work in building paper reading groups or other kinds of side projects to creatively express myself at work but I don’t want to be the person whose life revolves around their FANG.&lt;p&gt;Anyone else feel like this? What did you do?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>quacked</author><text>My advice would be to put your head down, live like a monk, and save&amp;#x2F;invest money. Get promoted as far as you can, but don&amp;#x27;t burn yourself out. If you see yourself having a family someday, spend your free time on finding a spouse.&lt;p&gt;Five years in, you&amp;#x27;ll have a huge pile of cash and an insane chunk on your resume that will almost certainly guarantee you an interview wherever you want. Once you hit that point, take some time off and do literally anything. Start a startup, be a contractor, get a new degree.&lt;p&gt;You have stumbled onto the sort of prosperity (easy low-stress job) that 99.95% of the world literally dreams about. To throw it away because you&amp;#x27;re not &amp;quot;creatively expressing yourself&amp;quot; would be foolish.&lt;p&gt;This advice doesn&amp;#x27;t apply if you&amp;#x27;re a relentlessly competitive founder type like Gates or Bezons, but if you were of that mentality, I doubt you&amp;#x27;d be having the same troubles you are.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>enos_feedler</author><text>I did this but didn’t get promoted at all. Never tried to. Did the bare minimum. Bounced between 5 managers before bouncing myself out of the company (Google). Lived dirt cheep and stockpiled cash. Used all of my energy during that time to dream of cool ideas. Implementing them now and have zero pressure to go back. Would not trade my current state of existence for anything.</text></comment>