One or two of those will be dropped in the next decade or two. It is how things go.

In fact, Netflix is only there nowadays to avoid the acronym from becoming offensive.

And it doesn't include Microsoft for some reason. FANMAG always made more sense to me.

Since Google is Alphabet, we can use FAAAM (or FAAAMN) instead.

I like that one.

... because FAANG was about compensation and MS is not competitive (at least for mid-career hires).

Take a look at levels 62 / 63 at MS vs. comparable roles at FAANGs: https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Amazon,Google,Facebook,Micro...

I won't pretend to understand how these levels compare, but it looks on par with Apple, no?

My understanding of FANG initially was that it was about tech stock performance and not compensation.

Yes, Jim Cramer coined the term AFAIK. Though it did map reasonably well to comp, in part because tech workers usually had RSUs as a major part of their comp.

IBM should definitely have a place there. Netflix is the one that's not like the others.

And where is the M for Microsoft? The acronym doesn't make much sense if you ask me.

The acronym refers to pay, not tech. IBM doesn't match the pay of FAANG

Nope. It refers to the stocks of the companies. Nothing to do with pay[0]

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/faang-stocks.asp

It's come to mean that but it was originally about stock--between which there was correlation.