If you hang around tech long enough, you'll hear someone say they're "grinding for FAANG." Then someone corrects them: "it's MAANG now." Then a third person chimes in with "actually it's MAMAA," and suddenly there's a whole thread arguing about letters. I find this genuinely funny, so here's the real story behind the acronym nobody can agree on.
It started as FANG
The term usually gets credited to CNBC's Jim Cramer and his team back around 2013, describing four tech stocks that were tearing up the market: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. Four letters, four Wall Street darlings.
A few years later Apple had gotten too big to leave out, so a second A got jammed in and FANG became FAANG: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google. That's the version most people still have burned into memory, partly because it stopped being a stock-market term and turned into shorthand for "the companies every engineer wants on their resume."
Then the letters started breaking
The big shake-up came in late 2021, when Facebook renamed itself Meta. Overnight the F didn't fit anymore, so FAANG quietly slid into MAANG: Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google. Same five companies, new opening letter. Plenty of people still say FAANG out of pure habit, but if you want to be technically correct, it's MAANG now.
Here's the quick who's-who:
- Meta (formerly Facebook): social, ads, and a giant bet on AI and VR.
- Amazon: e-commerce on the surface, but AWS is the part that prints money and hires armies of engineers.
- Apple: routinely the most valuable company on earth, and famously secretive about its interview process.
- Netflix: the odd one out. Far smaller than the others by headcount and market cap, and people genuinely argue about whether it still belongs. It earns its spot mostly on culture and engineering reputation.
- Google (Alphabet): search, ads, Android, and DeepMind.
Why it keeps mutating
Because the acronym was never official. It's vibes, and the vibes keep moving. Cramer himself later floated MAMAA (Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Apple, Alphabet), which quietly kicks Netflix out and adds Microsoft, arguably more deserving on size alone. Then Nvidia exploded with the AI boom and became one of the most valuable companies in the world, so now people keep trying to wedge an N in somewhere. None of the newer versions have stuck the way FAANG did, probably because FAANG just sounds better.
Why any of this matters if you're job hunting
Here's the part that's actually useful: the label keeps changing, but the hiring bar doesn't. Whatever you call this tier, these companies run remarkably similar loops. A recruiter screen, a coding round or two, a system design round once you're past entry level, and a behavioral round that's tougher than most people expect. The acronym is cosmetic. The preparation is the same.
So if you're targeting one of them, the useful move isn't memorizing which letters are in this month, it's knowing each company's specific loop before you walk in. That's the thing I lean on LastRound AI for. It keeps interview breakdowns for Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google and a few hundred more companies, pulled from public sources, plus voice mock interviews that score how you answer. Knowing the format ahead of time takes a surprising amount of stress out of the room.
Anyway, my slightly unpopular opinion: Netflix should have been swapped for Microsoft years ago, and Nvidia has earned a permanent seat. But I also think we'll keep saying FAANG forever because our brains refuse to let it go.
What's your version of the acronym? Does Netflix still make the cut, or is it time to officially retire it? I genuinely want to see the chaos in the comments.
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