Anyone else feels like the 'golden age' of Software Engineering, with $100k sign-on bonus out of college, is coming to an end?

If you are in school it seems now better to just become a founder/creator than aiming for FAANG

building far.quest & @wieldlabs.eth. cofounder at miy.com ventures. FID #274. Previously Square/Cash App. https://hiimnico.xyz/

talk is cheap, build.
C + rust + erlang + julia + λ. 
amateur in everything: distributed systems, ML, compilers and cryptography.

Better: slack off at Faang & build on the side until you can

work a few years at FAANG then become a founder

🕯️they/them, candlemaker at https://humankind.place

You had way better upward mobility at FAANG, but not anymore. aside from Visa issues, the payoff is now significantly higher as a founder. 

Hence if you are smart & ambitious you should have less fomo about the 'big tech salary'

I graduated 1.5 years ago and I can tell you that FAANGs still pay 99% better than other jobs, also offering H1B sponsorship.

Sign on bonuses are a bit lower but still significant

Agree, I also imagine that the autonomy of being a founder/creator could feel more important nowadays

3 years at MMAANG sets a dev up for life. 8 years is retirement.

Definitely. The market is balancing out 

I can find a smart motivated junior engineer today easily, wasn’t true 5 years ago

It happened to quants in 08-09' and then, shortly thereafter, that became one of the hottest jobs all over again

It’s the “Rise of the Machines” era. 

We will perhaps witness an even bigger shift in the coming years.

Can’t we just… Found a FAANG or something?