I think Stripe is one of the few bad examples they could have picked to compare against FAANG. Among late-stage startups, it seems highly regarded and its employees' options are likely to hold real value in the not-so-distant future.

But generally I think the OP is correct: working for FAANG has made many, many people far more money over the past decade than they would have otherwise made on average in a startup.

I suspect that eventually the tide will turn, as it always does. The companies will get middle-manager bloat, MBAs and accountants start pinching pennies, systems get dragged down in technical debt, and more nimble competitors eventually outcompete. But we're not there yet.

you’re comparing fang to average startup. instead you should compare fang to top tier startup. as that’s the choice people who get fang offers make... in almost all examples i can think of, the top tier startup pays more.

furthermore before they were fang companies, google was the top tier startup and IBM was the equivalent to FANG.

> in almost all examples i can think of, the top tier startup pays more.

WeWork and Airbnb want a word.

> a word.

A word about what? Their salaries are certainly competitive with, if not higher paying than, Google and Stripe's are objectively higher.

Not according to public info. When I left Google an L5 was commonly clearing 500k in liquid comp. Airbnb and WeWork weren’t even close and that was before the implosions.

airbnb pays a lot more than google lol. and they are actually doing great now despite layoffs at the realllt beginning of covid

Nah https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Airbnb,Google&track=Software...