This makes me wish I posted a few years ago when I first started at a FAANG. I was fresh out of college and worked on an email product which was in an area I wa

This makes me wish I posted a few years ago when I first started at a FAANG. I was fresh out of college and worked on an email product which was in an area I was interested but quickly learned how enterprise software is actually made. There is one interesting part which is the core and that’s the MVP. Working in this stage is exciting and fun to make and then there are years and years of slog smoothing out the edges and making it ready for production, which left me similarly disillusioned especially when my view of the real world fresh out of college was that every product that exists is interesting and perfect. Long story short, I worked on that boring project for two-ish years and saw the horrible political environment begin to deteriorate my once-ok team. I say once-ok because I convinced myself during that time that I liked my work because by all measures of society, I was successful, and having no knowledge of other teams I didn’t think there was an alternative. This was all I ever knew and thought every team in tech is like this. Which for the most part is actually true. Despite what Google and other big tech companies’ flashy recruiting and marketing, something like 99% of the engineers in those companies are doing boring shit to keep the money flowing . I also went through the exact same thought process where I thought my spirit had been drained and I could never get the excitement back because of this realization. I also often wondered if I had been permanently changed because of the experience and thought I would never feel creative again. However I made a big decision and took the leap to join a new team and couldn’t have landed in an environment that is more the polar opposite. And that is what gave me my spirit back. You need to find a product in a FAANG, or startup that you actually are passionate about and get to grow your own team and that will give you your passion back. Find a position which is an exact match for your skills and do not settle at all. If a position is not perfect do not even consider it and ask as many probing questions as you need and contact current members of the team to check for inconsistencies. Good luck and I hope you can find another project that brings you passion.