Is it realistic to work at a FAANG and bootstrap a startup on the side?
Would love to hear from some people that did this and if they found time management particularly challenging. If they sacrificed chasing promos and chased their ideas more instead etc
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I don't work for FAANG (in fact, their presence in Portugal is close no nonexistent) but I do work for a big retailer, with is a very demanding 40+ hours job that was greatly affected by covid.
I certainly did sacrifice chasing promos. I really don't invest time networking inside the company anymore. I also tried to automate my tasks as much as I could (but didn't tell that to anyone). Moreover, the more I chased my ideas, the more apathy I felt towards my real job.
Regarding time management: I try working at nights, but that was too exhausting. So now, I usually work on pluckd.co for one hour after my real work ends, tops. Weekends are for pluckd.co, too. Almost full time. This is why it's important to work on something you like. If I didn't believe in employee engagement, I would have abandoned my side hustle long ago!
Certainly doable with the right time management and discipline, however you'd likely really need to optimize your free time, which isn't for everyone. It would likely mean that all free time outside of work (or at least most of it) would need to go towards the side projects and you wouldn't have a lot of time to decompress. If you're the type of person that can handle that without burning out, I think it would be much easier to handle.