SOFTWARE ENGINEERS: By now, I think we’ve established that software
engineers at FAANG companies are paid a boat load of money.
This is usually anywhere between $175,000 per year to as much as $1.82 million per year.
While it’s extraordinarily difficult to get to level 7 or 8 and earn the 7 figure
salaries, it’s relatively possible to get to level 5 or 6 if you make the correct education
and careers choices and are willing to grind out leetcode.
But, all of this comes with one caveat, you have to go into software engineering.
From an objective perspective, this choice seems like a no brainer, but not everyone
is good at software engineering, and even if they are, they don’t necessarily want
to surf stackoverflow all day.
They’d much rather talk with customers and colleagues, set business goals, and drive
forward the company.
Fortunately, while software engineers get the highest salaries, there are several roles
at these companies that pay nearly as much with no coding experience.
So, here’s the top 3 highest paying FAANG jobs that don’t require coding.
PRODUCT MANAGERS: Starting off with one of the broadest jobs
offered at FAANG, we have product managers.
Product managers are responsible for setting the goals and vision of a given product and
coordinating the right people.
For example, if you were the product manager of Instagram, your first goal would be to
define the needs of Instagram users.
For Instagram, this would probably be hours of mindless entertainment along with social
validation.
The second step would be to create different pathways in which your product can achieve
these goals.
One pathway might be to leverage photos while another would be to leverage short form video.
Once you’ve got a couple of strong plans, your job would be to convince senior leadership
that they should actually put resources behind these plans and make them a reality.
If all goes well, you’ll have to work with technical people to make sure that your vision
is actually executed correctly.
In the end, you’re performance will be evaluated based on how well you achieved the needs of
your customers and stakeholders.
For example, how much did your idea increase user engagement or how much did it increase
user satisfaction.
As you can see, there’s nothing that’s technically difficult about this role, but
that’s also makes the job so difficult.
You’re often working with abstract concepts and visions to produce quantifiable results.
On the brightside, while the title has the word manager in it, you wont have any direct
reports unless you’re at an extremely senior level.
This means that you can be hired into this role straight out of college as an L3 product
manager.
And most of the people at this level are indeed fresh college grads.
You definitely wont be working on something as influential as Instagram or YouTube at
that level, but you may get to work on certain subproducts of these systems.
For example, you may be in charge of Instagram’s newsfeed or YouTube’s like button.
In terms of career trajectory, you have the potential to reach 7 figures as a product
director, so there’s plenty of room to grow.
Also, most C suite executives were product managers at one point in their careers including
Sundar Pichai.
So, you’re if you’re aiming for the moon, this would be the track for you.
But, we should note that this is one of the hardest careers to break into simply because
its so abstract and broad.
Virtually anyone can apply to this role and meet the minimum qualifications, but it’s
extremely difficult to actually get an interview and then convince the interviewer that you’re
the right choice.
Also, a lot of the products that you work on will be experimental meaning that they’ll
be the first to get cut during a recession.
But, if you’re looking for a sort of entrepreneurial leadership role, this would be the way to
go.
PROGRAM MANAGERS: Moving onto a strongly related but starkly
different role, we have program managers.
Again, while the title has the word “manager” it it, you probably wont be managing people
unless you’re L7 or beyond.
Instead, you’re role would be to manage programs.
Your primary job as a program manager would be the execute the vision of the product manager.
If the product manager was the CEO of a product, you would essentially be the COO.
You would need to ensure that products are delivered on time and within the budget.
For example, if the product manager wants a search feature that can scale to 100 million
users, it will be your job to make sure that the backend systems can keep up in a cost
effective manner.
This generally means working with software engineers and solutions architects to create
robust scalable programs.
Basically, you would be responsible for bringing together all of the details to make the product
managers vision a reality.
There are two main types of program managers which are just program managers and technical
program managers.
If you’re looking into this role, I think you definitely want to go the technical program
manager or TPM route.
Not only does the technical route pay substantially more, but it’s much easier to score one
of these roles if you do indeed have the technical knowhow.
One option for TPMs is to become a software engineering TPM, but there are plenty of TPM
roles that don’t require any software engineering skills.
Instead, they require technical knowledge of cloud systems, databases, networks, enterprise
solutions like SAP, Oracle, Salesforce and so on.
While it does take time to learn these disciplines, you often become irreplaceable within an organization.
During a market downturn, it’s easy for companies to slash products and thus slash
product managers and regular program managers.
But, it’s way more difficult to cut a technical program manager whos responsible for Google
Cloud or essential internal software like SAP S4 Hana.
So, being a technical program manager gives you solid mix of having technical skills that
are hard to replace but also not having to do technical stuff all day.
If you chose the regular program manager route on the other hand, you’d be doing essentially
the same thing, except you likely wont be dealing with tech products.
Instead, you’ll probably be dealing with the supply chain, marketing or UI.
For example, if you were a supply chain program manager at Apple, you may be responsible for
ensuring that enough iPhones make their way to retail locations in the southern part of
the US.
Similarly, if you were a UI program manager, you may be responsible for testing various
UI features and delivering the most effective set of features.
You should keep in mind though that if you’re targeting one of these broader roles though,
you’ll likely be facing a lot more competition simply because more people will meet the requirements.
This is yet another reason to go down the technical route, but in the end, it’s up
to you.
SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT: Moving onto the next role, we have my personal
favorite which is solutions architect.
Unlike program manager and product manager roles that appeal a broad range of people,
solutions architect roles are usually extremely specific.
These roles are very technical meaning that you can’t BS your way into one of these
roles, but that’s also the beauty of these roles.
You’ll only be competing with people who also know the technical stuff, but what exactly
does a solutions architect do?
Well, one way to think about it is that they’re basically the software engineers of none coding
tasks.
For example, if you need to code an algorithm, you would contact a software engineer, but
if you need to deploy that algorithm onto the cloud at scale, you would contact a cloud
solutions architect.
That’s definitely an oversimplication of the role, and there are some solutions architects
that need to know coding.
But in general, solutions architects handle all of the technological tasks that don’t
involve coding.
This includes things such as migrations, deployments, database management, network management, cloud
infrastructure, and IT security.
Usually, you’ll choose one sector to be an expert in.
For example, you can be an expert in cloud solutions and know the ins and outs of AWS,
GCP, and Azure.
Or you can be an expert in enterprise solutions and know everything about Oracle, SAP, and
Salesforce.
Given the technical nature of the role, job security is usually on par with software engineers
if not even more.
This is especially true if you specialize in something like cyber security.
Just because the job requires a bunch of technical knowledge doesn’t mean that you’ll be
doing technical stuff all day though.
Much of the job has to do with conveying technical information to non technical people.
For instance, if you’re an internal solutions architect, you would likely need to work with
a bunch of internal technical program managers and provide them with the best backend solutions
for a given product.
If you’re an external solutions architect, you’ll work with enterprise customers and
help these customers implement your company’s solutions to the best extent.
If you were a solutions architect at AWS for example, your job might to be keep Netflix
happy in terms of the backend.
In terms of career trajectory, solutions architects don’t quite make it into 7 figures, but
that’s simply because there’s not as many levels.
In terms of the compensation at each level though, you basically get the same compensation
as a TPM.
For example, an L7 solutions architect at Google makes $535 while an L7 TPM at Google
makes $527.
Also, if you’re a star solutions architect, you’ll have an easy time switching to senior
TPM roles.
For example, a reasonable switch may be to go from being an L7 enterprise architect to
being the director of enterprise resource planning which basically an L8 TPM role.
From there, you can become a managing director, VP, Senior VP and so on and so forth.
So, in the end, if you’re willing to do technical stuff but don’t want necessarily
want to code, solutions architect is definitely the way to go.
ALTERNATIVES: As you’ve probably noticed by now, this
video was mainly focused at tech roles that don’t require coding, but these companies
also hire a bunch of non tech roles as well.
For example, they need accountants, data scientists, product designers, business analysts, recruiters,
and so on.
And these companies pay well for all of these roles.
For example, an L6 Google recruiter earns a whopping $335,000.
With that being said though, in the end, these companies are tech companies meaning that
the people who are the most valuable and most influential will be tech workers.
This primarily consists of software engineers and the people who work directly around software
engineers like product managers, program managers, and solutions architects.
So, if you want to play an integral role at these companies but not have to code, these
three choices are by far the best options.
If you’re more of a business person and want to create overarching goals and visions
and not really deal with the technical stuff, you might want to look into product management.
If you’re comfortable dealing with some technical stuff but still wanna mainly focus
on the business side of things, you probably want to look into program management.
And finally, if you’re super comfortable with technical stuff, but you just don’t
wanna do coding specifically, you’re best bet would be to become a solutions architect.
All of these roles are in high demand not just inside FAANG but across the entire job
market.
In the modern age, virtually every company needs IT solutions and all of these roles
are essential in delivering said IT solutions.
So, even if you aren’t able to crack into FAANG directly with one of these career paths,
it’s more than likely that you’ll be able to make it into a background company like
Cisco or Oracle.
And from there, if you’re truly a star performer, it’s just a matter of time until you make
it into a FAANG company if that’s your goal of course.
Which role sounds most appealing to you?
Comment that down below.
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