you’d be just fine at FANG. you are taking horror stories and thinking that is the way things happen at X. Your experience at a big company is mostly dictated b

you’d be just fine at FANG. you are taking horror stories and thinking that is the way things happen at X. Your experience at a big company is mostly dictated by 1) your boss and 2) your team. There are good pockets in the worst places and there are really bad pockets in the best places. The exercise to how you figure this out is left yo the reader. Regarding impact: you can have an impact at bigCo. It’s just that it’s not something that’s usually visible to the outside world (or sometimes not even internally). Hypothetically: if a change you make or a product you work on helps reduce the power usage of a datacenter or an android phone or a car by 1% you have made a gigantic impact. Even of only 1% of that 1% is your actual work. You’re not interested in impact. You’re interested in stroking your ego. That’s all good and whatever but at some point you’re gonna realize that you’re gonna die and all your “accomplishments” mean jack shit. I have way more respect for someone that works at Google for example, puts in their time of focused work (even if it’s “only” 20 hours per week), invests in themselves and also invests in their families and is an exemplary mother/father and/or invests in the community they live in than I have respect for someone who “hustles” and works 80 hours per week.