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> You don’t like working for FANG. That seems like a totally normal sane response to me. I’d be more concerned about the people who love that corporate environm

> You don’t like working for FANG. That seems like a totally normal sane response to me. I’d be more concerned about the people who love that corporate environment rather than those it doesn’t give meaning to. There are lots of people at Amazon, Google, and I'm sure Facebook that find meaning in their job. Improving search actually does help people, billions of them. Improving the web stack (Chromium) also helps billions of people. I'm guessing the people at Oculus (Facebook) believe they are helping to invent the future. Pocket computers used to = newton/palm/ce, VR is at that first level but many believe it will advance to iPhone level (more ubiquitous)a at some point. I know people working on robotics at Amazon who love it.

jpetso 7y ago
Except that working on stuff for FAANG doesn't necessarily make things better and instead just helps with monetization and/or lock-in. Is it really an improvement to cover more of the search results page in ads, centralize ever more functionality on that page which pushes out smaller/independent competitors, track users more comprehensively and optimize mobile loading times by creating a corporate-controlled, Google-hosted format that companies are coerced into instead of doing the same thing with standards-based, distributed technologies? Is it really an improvement to the "web stack" if Chromium kills diversity in the browser engine space, blurs the lines between client software and Google account, then proceeds to limit ad-blockers' capabilities via extension API changes? While at the same time Google web sites happily go about cross-advertising for more monoculture and deliberately not supporting Firefox even where it provides all required functionality. (Similar examples exist for other market-dominating companies and products.) One man's improvement is another one's trading the long-term health of tech and business ecosystems for short-term convenience and stock market returns. It's tempting to believe in the usefulness of one's work is when the massive scale and complexity of FAANG companies make it so easy to miss the forest for the trees.
randomsearch 7y ago
Yeah, I think you’re right in that I’ve come across as _too_ dismissive. I’m sure many people do find meaning at Amazon etc on specific projects, I just think it’s extremely unlikely that _most_ of their employees will; in large corporations there are few cutting edge robotics jobs etc and lots of jobs that don’t really have a purpose outside of serving the corporation. I guess I’m talking about the majority.
cloverich 7y ago
I think the distinction is that FAANG companies are so large, all of these experiences could happen to different people: - Works on core or important projects that are released regularly (yay) - Works on important or cool projects that get canned before being release, or cancelled shortly after (fun for some, deeply frustrating and demoralizing for others) - Same as #2, but the person see's it coming a year ahead of time (my scenario in non-FAANG. Impossible to stay motivated) Unless you can get back towards #1, the work will be deeply dissatisfying for most. Though some people don't care all that much, and as long as they like the team or their work life balance, are perfectly happy. That's fine too. But I think hn attracts a lot of start-up crowd, and most of us identify strongly with position #2 / #3 being deeply dissatisfying. So it colors our vision quite a bit.

jpetso 7y ago

Except that working on stuff for FAANG doesn't necessarily make things better and instead just helps with monetization and/or lock-in. Is it really an improvement to cover more of the search results page in ads, centralize ever more functionality on that page which pushes out smaller/independent competitors, track users more comprehensively and optimize mobile loading times by creating a corporate-controlled, Google-hosted format that companies are coerced into instead of doing the same thing with standards-based, distributed technologies? Is it really an improvement to the "web stack" if Chromium kills diversity in the browser engine space, blurs the lines between client software and Google account, then proceeds to limit ad-blockers' capabilities via extension API changes? While at the same time Google web sites happily go about cross-advertising for more monoculture and deliberately not supporting Firefox even where it provides all required functionality. (Similar examples exist for other market-dominating companies and products.) One man's improvement is another one's trading the long-term health of tech and business ecosystems for short-term convenience and stock market returns. It's tempting to believe in the usefulness of one's work is when the massive scale and complexity of FAANG companies make it so easy to miss the forest for the trees.

randomsearch 7y ago

Yeah, I think you’re right in that I’ve come across as _too_ dismissive. I’m sure many people do find meaning at Amazon etc on specific projects, I just think it’s extremely unlikely that _most_ of their employees will; in large corporations there are few cutting edge robotics jobs etc and lots of jobs that don’t really have a purpose outside of serving the corporation. I guess I’m talking about the majority.

cloverich 7y ago

I think the distinction is that FAANG companies are so large, all of these experiences could happen to different people: - Works on core or important projects that are released regularly (yay) - Works on important or cool projects that get canned before being release, or cancelled shortly after (fun for some, deeply frustrating and demoralizing for others) - Same as #2, but the person see's it coming a year ahead of time (my scenario in non-FAANG. Impossible to stay motivated) Unless you can get back towards #1, the work will be deeply dissatisfying for most. Though some people don't care all that much, and as long as they like the team or their work life balance, are perfectly happy. That's fine too. But I think hn attracts a lot of start-up crowd, and most of us identify strongly with position #2 / #3 being deeply dissatisfying. So it colors our vision quite a bit.