10 ms·

These kind of posts keep making me think I should go work for a FAANG so I can actually retire one day. Anyways, as someone on the other side, who has never wor

by nvarsj 7y ago

These kind of posts keep making me think I should go work for a FAANG so I can actually retire one day. Anyways, as someone on the other side, who has never worked for or applied to FAANG, I have a few reactions. First, your salary is absolutely ridiculous. I know hard working people who have built their own businesses with blood and sweat, and they still don't make as much as a slacker engineer at FAANG. So I'd say try not to take it for granted - you will find it difficult to even make a fraction of your comp if you leave FAANG. Second, in my experience working with ex-FAANG - these engineers, while they all tend to be very smart, tend to be borderline junior engineers in the real world. They simply don't know how to build or operate something without the luxury of the mature tooling that exists at FAANG. You may be in for a reality shock when you leave the FAANG bubble. On the other hand it could be a great challenge if you're bored, and will broaden your engineering experience greatly. If I was in your position, I'd look into FIRE and then you can just relax and do whatever you want without worrying about finances.

blablabla123 7y ago
> mature tooling that exists at FAANG I never worked at FAANG but even after more than 10 years working in tech, it still surprises me how undervalued well working tooling is. I'm not talking about 100% automation with infinite possibilities. Just really basic stuff, like deployment or setting up a development environment. That should always be a no-brainer.
- draw_down 7y ago
  Maybe it should, but that stuff is hard to get right and therefore expensive. It only starts making sense once you have a lot of engineers to amortize the cost over, and who are too expensive to be kept idle due to issues that arise from bad tools/lack of tools.
- verletx64 7y ago
  Easier said than done even if you _do_ get the time to invest into it.
- Quarrelsome 7y ago
  it doesn't show up on the books. All companies over optimise for things they measure and under optimise for things they don't. Nobody has a reliable measure for development productivity so it oft doesn't receive the love it deserves.
- mepiethree 7y ago
  I used to work at Google, and I find the tooling much better on the outside. Heroku is much better than Google's deployment tool; Github is much better than their review tool. The only things I miss are the snacks and the searchable codebase
  - devicetray0 7y ago
    > and the searchable codebase Do you mean that you'd search Google's entire codebase monorepo for code examples, or that there was a better, searchable code snippet tool internally?
    - ertemplin 7y ago
      Not sure about google, but most of the big tech companies have a code browser website with a search feature that shows the most "relevant" repositories first in the search results. For example, repositories that people in your team or org have recently modified will show up near the top of the results.
    - paulgb 7y ago
      > Do you mean that you'd search Google's entire codebase monorepo for code examples As another former Googler, yes, searching the entire monorepo was a frequent occurrence. Internal code search is pretty good (it's a search company, after all) but I have to say that I don't miss it so much now that Sourcegraph exists.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    I did a short contract at Amazon (not AWS) and I couldn't get away fast enough. What a rat's nest.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- o-__-o 7y ago
  Pro tip: Building repeatable and distributable tooling patterns is a great way to break into client sites as a consultant
- nscalf 7y ago
  And it's totally reasonable that this isn't common place. The team I'm with now has been spending a lot of our spare time at work trying to get a suite of tools built out to make things like logging, message publishing, etc. spun up easily. It is very painful. The simple case is pretty simple, but if you add any complexity to it you're in for a world of pain.
  - GFischer 7y ago
    Not sure what stack you're using, but Azure Application Insights is very nice for logging. And they have lots of tools for what you're mentioning (but you have to pay for them). If not, maybe you do have to build them (and it might be monetizable even!)
- GFischer 7y ago
  We're using Azure at my current workplace, and the amount of legwork you can get done is pretty amazing (as long as you're willing to pay for it). We have an ARM template to set up environments, deployment is painless with Azure DevOps, etc.
badfrog 7y ago
> these engineers, while they all tend to be very smart, tend to be borderline junior engineers in the real world Define "real world"?
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  Companies that operate without a firehose of money from advertising or shiny hardware to fund everything. I came from a series of real world companies struggling to turn a profit to a FAANG, and the difference in, well, everything is pretty vast.
- whitehouse3 7y ago
  Small-medium sized businesses without dedicated devops people. I'm working with an ex-Googler who struggles with basic dev stuff like * How to make a Python environment for a brand new project * Source control basics like commits and merging * Reading documentation or using SO * Basic command-line debugging or even using print() statements! I've asked a few times: "How did you get anything done before?". And (S)He responds that they never had to worry about this at Google. [Edit]: I don't think all or even many Googlers are this way. But that this person made $10k/month for a year and a half gives me pause. I don't thing FAANG's are touchy about firing people. At this rate (S)He likely won't make it through our ninety-day review.
  - mav3rick 7y ago
    Wtf ? This is not true. 99% of devs at Google would go above and beyond this.
    - drngdds 7y ago
      Yeah, I work at another large tech company and I'm pretty sure all of my coworkers know that stuff or would be able to easily figure it out.
  - tuan 7y ago
    hmm I didn't have to do #1 in the list when I was at Google, but I did 2,3,4 pretty much everyday. I guess this really depends on which team your coworker was in.
schnable 7y ago
What's FIRE?
- GuiA 7y ago
  Financial Independence/Retire Early The core idea is to define your annual expenditures (let’s say $50k), a long term investment strategy you personally feel comfortable with (say 5% ROI), and from there you can deduce the amount you need to save to be financially independent (in this case, $1M).
  - hanniabu 7y ago
    Most recommend using 4%, although that's also considered too risky by many. On the flip side 3% is also seen as too conservative. Not being savvy with economics myself, I've personally chosen to use a happy average of 3.5%
  - TurkishPoptart 7y ago
    What do they tend to recommend in terms of generating passive income? Just investing in index funds and high dividend-yielding stocks (Ford, AT&T)?
    - war1025 7y ago
      Mr Money Mustache [1] advocates just investing in index funds. Others push things like real estate. Really depends on where you interests and talents lie. A common thread that these people tend to find though is that once you've saved up that much money, what you have actually learned is how to efficiently grow wealth, and I have seen very few examples of people actually just stopping there and coasting. Usually they just keep on trucking, maybe shifting into a different field. [1] https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/
  - bogomipz 7y ago
    >" a long term investment strategy you personally feel comfortable with (say 5% ROI)" Could you elaborate? Why would you need a level of comfort with an ROI? Or is the thing you need to be comfortable with actual the risk involved in getting that target ROI? Is that what you mean? Also is the "million" you mention just a hypothetical? Although a million is a lot of money I don't thinks it's enough it's large enough to to qualify as being financially independent no? At least not in the US or EU. You would still need to work full time as it's not enough to retire on.
satokema_work 7y ago
I've been told more than once that your average Midwestern software engineer blows your average west coast engineer out of the water, but never seen it elaborated on like this. Tooling does make a great difference - I was shocked when I had a coworker actually speak out against automating mundane git commands.
- war1025 7y ago
  Upvoting for the boost to my Midwestern ego :)
- Spooky23 7y ago
  For an average, absolutely. I can hire an engineer where I live for like $85k as an FTE who will develop into an above average one in a couple of years. The difference is that certain talents and deep specialists only exist in the hubs. It’s similar to medicine where you want to go to NYC or Boston for certain diagnoses.
solidasparagus 7y ago
I feel like I've seen the tooling problem with a couple ex-Googlers, but more and more the FAANGs have started to sell their tooling as cloud products so the difference isn't what it once was.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

by nvarsj 7y ago

blablabla123 7y ago

> mature tooling that exists at FAANG I never worked at FAANG but even after more than 10 years working in tech, it still surprises me how undervalued well working tooling is. I'm not talking about 100% automation with infinite possibilities. Just really basic stuff, like deployment or setting up a development environment. That should always be a no-brainer.

draw_down 7y ago
Maybe it should, but that stuff is hard to get right and therefore expensive. It only starts making sense once you have a lot of engineers to amortize the cost over, and who are too expensive to be kept idle due to issues that arise from bad tools/lack of tools.
verletx64 7y ago
Easier said than done even if you _do_ get the time to invest into it.
Quarrelsome 7y ago
it doesn't show up on the books. All companies over optimise for things they measure and under optimise for things they don't. Nobody has a reliable measure for development productivity so it oft doesn't receive the love it deserves.
mepiethree 7y ago
I used to work at Google, and I find the tooling much better on the outside. Heroku is much better than Google's deployment tool; Github is much better than their review tool. The only things I miss are the snacks and the searchable codebase
- devicetray0 7y ago
  > and the searchable codebase Do you mean that you'd search Google's entire codebase monorepo for code examples, or that there was a better, searchable code snippet tool internally?
  - ertemplin 7y ago
    Not sure about google, but most of the big tech companies have a code browser website with a search feature that shows the most "relevant" repositories first in the search results. For example, repositories that people in your team or org have recently modified will show up near the top of the results.
  - paulgb 7y ago
    > Do you mean that you'd search Google's entire codebase monorepo for code examples As another former Googler, yes, searching the entire monorepo was a frequent occurrence. Internal code search is pretty good (it's a search company, after all) but I have to say that I don't miss it so much now that Sourcegraph exists.
- hinkley 7y ago
  I did a short contract at Amazon (not AWS) and I couldn't get away fast enough. What a rat's nest.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
o-__-o 7y ago
Pro tip: Building repeatable and distributable tooling patterns is a great way to break into client sites as a consultant
nscalf 7y ago
And it's totally reasonable that this isn't common place. The team I'm with now has been spending a lot of our spare time at work trying to get a suite of tools built out to make things like logging, message publishing, etc. spun up easily. It is very painful. The simple case is pretty simple, but if you add any complexity to it you're in for a world of pain.
- GFischer 7y ago
  Not sure what stack you're using, but Azure Application Insights is very nice for logging. And they have lots of tools for what you're mentioning (but you have to pay for them). If not, maybe you do have to build them (and it might be monetizable even!)
GFischer 7y ago
We're using Azure at my current workplace, and the amount of legwork you can get done is pretty amazing (as long as you're willing to pay for it). We have an ARM template to set up environments, deployment is painless with Azure DevOps, etc.

badfrog 7y ago

> these engineers, while they all tend to be very smart, tend to be borderline junior engineers in the real world Define "real world"?

9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
Companies that operate without a firehose of money from advertising or shiny hardware to fund everything. I came from a series of real world companies struggling to turn a profit to a FAANG, and the difference in, well, everything is pretty vast.
whitehouse3 7y ago
Small-medium sized businesses without dedicated devops people. I'm working with an ex-Googler who struggles with basic dev stuff like * How to make a Python environment for a brand new project * Source control basics like commits and merging * Reading documentation or using SO * Basic command-line debugging or even using print() statements! I've asked a few times: "How did you get anything done before?". And (S)He responds that they never had to worry about this at Google. [Edit]: I don't think all or even many Googlers are this way. But that this person made $10k/month for a year and a half gives me pause. I don't thing FAANG's are touchy about firing people. At this rate (S)He likely won't make it through our ninety-day review.
- mav3rick 7y ago
  Wtf ? This is not true. 99% of devs at Google would go above and beyond this.
  - drngdds 7y ago
    Yeah, I work at another large tech company and I'm pretty sure all of my coworkers know that stuff or would be able to easily figure it out.
- tuan 7y ago
  hmm I didn't have to do #1 in the list when I was at Google, but I did 2,3,4 pretty much everyday. I guess this really depends on which team your coworker was in.

schnable 7y ago

What's FIRE?

GuiA 7y ago
Financial Independence/Retire Early The core idea is to define your annual expenditures (let’s say $50k), a long term investment strategy you personally feel comfortable with (say 5% ROI), and from there you can deduce the amount you need to save to be financially independent (in this case, $1M).
- hanniabu 7y ago
  Most recommend using 4%, although that's also considered too risky by many. On the flip side 3% is also seen as too conservative. Not being savvy with economics myself, I've personally chosen to use a happy average of 3.5%
- TurkishPoptart 7y ago
  What do they tend to recommend in terms of generating passive income? Just investing in index funds and high dividend-yielding stocks (Ford, AT&T)?
  - war1025 7y ago
    Mr Money Mustache [1] advocates just investing in index funds. Others push things like real estate. Really depends on where you interests and talents lie. A common thread that these people tend to find though is that once you've saved up that much money, what you have actually learned is how to efficiently grow wealth, and I have seen very few examples of people actually just stopping there and coasting. Usually they just keep on trucking, maybe shifting into a different field. [1] https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/
- bogomipz 7y ago
  >" a long term investment strategy you personally feel comfortable with (say 5% ROI)" Could you elaborate? Why would you need a level of comfort with an ROI? Or is the thing you need to be comfortable with actual the risk involved in getting that target ROI? Is that what you mean? Also is the "million" you mention just a hypothetical? Although a million is a lot of money I don't thinks it's enough it's large enough to to qualify as being financially independent no? At least not in the US or EU. You would still need to work full time as it's not enough to retire on.

satokema_work 7y ago

I've been told more than once that your average Midwestern software engineer blows your average west coast engineer out of the water, but never seen it elaborated on like this. Tooling does make a great difference - I was shocked when I had a coworker actually speak out against automating mundane git commands.

war1025 7y ago
Upvoting for the boost to my Midwestern ego :)
Spooky23 7y ago
For an average, absolutely. I can hire an engineer where I live for like $85k as an FTE who will develop into an above average one in a couple of years. The difference is that certain talents and deep specialists only exist in the hubs. It’s similar to medicine where you want to go to NYC or Boston for certain diagnoses.

solidasparagus 7y ago

I feel like I've seen the tooling problem with a couple ex-Googlers, but more and more the FAANGs have started to sell their tooling as cloud products so the difference isn't what it once was.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]