4 ms·

I've worked at a dozen companies from two-person dev shops, legacy enterprise companies, all the way up to a FAANG as it scaled from 5k to 30k people. The FAAN

I've worked at a dozen companies from two-person dev shops, legacy enterprise companies, all the way up to a FAANG as it scaled from 5k to 30k people. The FAANG "megacorp" was my absolute favourite job. I learned more, had more impact, made more money, and boosted my own career further than anywhere else I've worked. Large corporations are not the Evil Co. from your Saturday morning cartoons. Yes, they have immense power, but from what I've seen unethical behaviour and treating employees like shit are more common in non-tech or smaller, dead end, companies.

jfim 6y ago
> a FAANG as it scaled from 5k to 30k people It might be a different experience joining when the FAANG is already at 30k people though. More protobuf engineering and less "hey let's try this completely new thing."
- crmrc114 6y ago
  Yeah, see that is when I joined a FAANG. So it was basically the Borg collective- you, mindless drone repair plamsa conduit x347B. I was not able to use my creativity and problem solving and it was soul killing. I am now back in Small-Mid Enterprise and I love it. I get to design solutions from the ground up, sell them to other teams and build consensus then slam through development and implementation. So I guess my lesson was, never join a megacorp again- people are expendable there and there is no value placed on their individuality.
- Matthias247 6y ago
  Not necessarily. There might be some things that are already set in stone. E.g. the companies build and version control system might be fixed, you might be deemed to use protobufs, etc. But there can still be one area to innovate on! It's usually not productive trying to reinvent everything anyway. Pick one thing, and excel at that. There are enough of those challenges also at bigger companies. Maybe not at every team, but there is likely enough internal flexibility that one can find a suitable team. And really, inventing the 100th iteration of a custom CI or RPC system at a small company isn't that exciting either.
flatiron 6y ago
I’m a contractor and currently “work” for a FAANG on a 3 year contract. I love it. Learning a bunch. Seeing their internal processes will change how I work. But I’m still free (after 3 years)
ddevault 6y ago
Just to give you some perspective, using Google as an example. I don't know when Google had 5,000 employees, but I have a source[0] that says they had 3,000 in 2004, when they went public, and after the market settled their market cap was $23 billion. Today, it's $1.185 trillion. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/02/google-employee-growth-2001-through-2019.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/02/google-employee-growth-2001-... When you joined, it wasn't a megacorp, and when it became a megacorp, you had become the "tenured staff" I referred to in my article. Your experience was not the same as the target audience will have.
- throwaway3699 6y ago
  How is a public company worth $23B not a megacorp??
  - ddevault 6y ago
    Google was a very large company at $23B, but hardly a stand-out on the Fortune 500. The megacorps which are the focus of discussion - contemporary FAANG et al - are in an entirely different league, by orders of magnitude.
    - BeetleB 6y ago
      It really doesn't help your case when you have your own views of what a megacorp is that are way out of whack with the rest of the world. I would recommend you write your blog post math style, where you begin with definitions so that people know what you're talking about.
      - ddevault 6y ago
        I have added a small edit which clarifies this point. However, I do not consider my definition to be "out of whack with the rest of the world".
  - csomar 6y ago
    $23bn I think is a corp and $1trillion+ is a megacorp? What is a gigacorp? $100trillion+?
thelittleone 6y ago
Here's a few observations from 25 years in tech including megacorps: 1) is what you do core to the business? 2) is the company a growth leader? QoQ, YoY, market share, revenue etc. 3) is the company innovating organically 2) and 3) have a fairly big effect on culture. People are busy making shit happen, there's enough exciting projects and career advancement opportunities going around. There's no risk of downsize (firings) so there's less politics it's more about how well you produce. At some point the company gets too big. Organic growth slows, reorgs happen culture slides, "A" player's leave and it just perpetuates. Once company can no longer sustain the growth shareholders demand organically, the culture and quality of job experience slides. That's a good time to bail.

jfim 6y ago

> a FAANG as it scaled from 5k to 30k people It might be a different experience joining when the FAANG is already at 30k people though. More protobuf engineering and less "hey let's try this completely new thing."

crmrc114 6y ago
Yeah, see that is when I joined a FAANG. So it was basically the Borg collective- you, mindless drone repair plamsa conduit x347B. I was not able to use my creativity and problem solving and it was soul killing. I am now back in Small-Mid Enterprise and I love it. I get to design solutions from the ground up, sell them to other teams and build consensus then slam through development and implementation. So I guess my lesson was, never join a megacorp again- people are expendable there and there is no value placed on their individuality.
Matthias247 6y ago
Not necessarily. There might be some things that are already set in stone. E.g. the companies build and version control system might be fixed, you might be deemed to use protobufs, etc. But there can still be one area to innovate on! It's usually not productive trying to reinvent everything anyway. Pick one thing, and excel at that. There are enough of those challenges also at bigger companies. Maybe not at every team, but there is likely enough internal flexibility that one can find a suitable team. And really, inventing the 100th iteration of a custom CI or RPC system at a small company isn't that exciting either.

flatiron 6y ago

I’m a contractor and currently “work” for a FAANG on a 3 year contract. I love it. Learning a bunch. Seeing their internal processes will change how I work. But I’m still free (after 3 years)

ddevault 6y ago

Just to give you some perspective, using Google as an example. I don't know when Google had 5,000 employees, but I have a source[0] that says they had 3,000 in 2004, when they went public, and after the market settled their market cap was $23 billion. Today, it's $1.185 trillion. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/02/google-employee-growth-2001-through-2019.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/02/google-employee-growth-2001-... When you joined, it wasn't a megacorp, and when it became a megacorp, you had become the "tenured staff" I referred to in my article. Your experience was not the same as the target audience will have.

throwaway3699 6y ago
How is a public company worth $23B not a megacorp??
- ddevault 6y ago
  Google was a very large company at $23B, but hardly a stand-out on the Fortune 500. The megacorps which are the focus of discussion - contemporary FAANG et al - are in an entirely different league, by orders of magnitude.
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    It really doesn't help your case when you have your own views of what a megacorp is that are way out of whack with the rest of the world. I would recommend you write your blog post math style, where you begin with definitions so that people know what you're talking about.
    - ddevault 6y ago
      I have added a small edit which clarifies this point. However, I do not consider my definition to be "out of whack with the rest of the world".
- csomar 6y ago
  $23bn I think is a corp and $1trillion+ is a megacorp? What is a gigacorp? $100trillion+?

thelittleone 6y ago

Here's a few observations from 25 years in tech including megacorps: 1) is what you do core to the business? 2) is the company a growth leader? QoQ, YoY, market share, revenue etc. 3) is the company innovating organically 2) and 3) have a fairly big effect on culture. People are busy making shit happen, there's enough exciting projects and career advancement opportunities going around. There's no risk of downsize (firings) so there's less politics it's more about how well you produce. At some point the company gets too big. Organic growth slows, reorgs happen culture slides, "A" player's leave and it just perpetuates. Once company can no longer sustain the growth shareholders demand organically, the culture and quality of job experience slides. That's a good time to bail.