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Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful

• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Nextgrid 5y ago
  You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. By all means raise these concerns and suggest improvements, but ultimately if a FAANG wants to waste its money and be stupid, let them be and enjoy part of that money. In a small startup where you have significant financial upside in it succeeding my advice would be different, but here just lay back and enjoy the paychecks. Given your description of the team it seems like you should be able to outperform them without any trouble.
• codegeek 5y ago
  "A+ players solving hard problems" Is this really what people think when joining a large company such as FAANG ? I mean not everyone can be an A player in a company with 1000s of employees, correct ? Also not every team is going to be solving hard problems. Someone has to do the dirty things. Isn't that understood ? Not trying to shit on you OP but I would have tried to learn more about the team in interviews if possible or is that just not a thing with FAANG interviews ?
  • aynyc 5y ago
    This is what you say when asked, "Why do you want to join XXX?". Say it long enough, you internalize it and accept it. FAANG usually don't hire for a specific team, you get matched after. It's a crapshoot where you end up, but they usually let you transfer relatively easily if positions are opened.
    • smsm42 5y ago
      - Why do you want to join XXX? - https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2014-08-17 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2014-08-17
  • efficax 5y ago
    The hoops you have to jump through to snag one of these jobs make it seem like everyone there must be on top of their game. The truth seems to be that once you've got the position you can coast, these organizations are just too large, too bureaucratic and too rich to solve the problem of poor performance effectively
    • NullPrefix 5y ago
      >everyone there must be on top of their game On top of their hoop jumping game.
    • clint 5y ago
      The hoops, to me, make it seem like you're going to be working with puzzlemaster trivialords, which sounds like the definition of hell on earth.
    • zamalek 5y ago
      > The hoops you have to jump through to snag one of these jobs This right here is exactly the problem. In the interview you are expected to write a fault tolerant k-way distributed sort and publish it to production, in 3 hours. Once you are embedded in your team they'll have you fixing typos on the landing page. "Our interview process is good at finding people who are good at interviewing, not good at their job." ~ Someone I follow on Twitter
• Reubend 5y ago
  A job is a job. Quit if you don't like it, and stay if you think it's better than where you were before. If you can land a FAANG job, you can land a non-FAANG job too (with enough effort and time).
• api 5y ago
  The job market in this field is pretty strong right now. Go somewhere else. There are lots of funded startups and smaller companies recruiting. It is not weird to churn around early in your career to find the right fit. Try not to do it too much but one or two rapid hops on a CV is not strange.
• tbihl 5y ago
  I have analogous experience working on projects/organizations that have experienced potential terminal neglect, though not at FAANGs. Probably I'd accept that your hours will be longer than acceptable, if that's a tradeoff you can handle. What you get in return is avoidance of the feeling that you spend all your time accomplishing nothing. From there, it's building relationships, documenting what gets accomplished, and trying to meet people where they are so that they can maybe get something done (and not break other things.) That's from a managing perspective, but if you are determined to not coast, that may be what you'll be doing.
• alecst 5y ago
  No use staying somewhere where you're unhappy. You can try to stick it out, if that suits your long term goals. But you only have one life to live. Consider what it's worth to you.
• peytn 5y ago
  Worry about your review. Everything else is secondary. Don’t try to turn the team around lol.
• zegl 5y ago
  Go back to work for a startup? Large organisations are large beasts, with their own culture and way of working. Every project has tons of stakeholders and everything is moving slowly. In my experience, you'll only really get to solve problems at a startup. At a FAANG-sized many decisions are likely made "by committee" or by some higher up, and your project is always at risk of getting blocked for political reasons. If you enjoyed working at startups in the past, I'd go work for a new one that you're finding exciting!
• ozzythecat 5y ago
  I’ve been at a couple FANG companies in my career. Generally I worked with extremely intelligent people, but I did sometimes work with people who didn’t care… not that this makes it any better. Are you able to switch teams? Can you find or take ownership of a specific part of a project that’ll keep you sane and motivated? Are you able to fix the specific tooling on your team or for your project that you don’t like? Is the tooling really backwards 10 years, or is it that you’re unfamiliar with it and just out of your comfort zone?
  • aoiwelle 5y ago
    This! I've also worked with people at both FAANG and non-FAANG where the issue is motivation and not "intelligence", so I would frame it to myself as that. Depending on the company, you might be able to switch sooner once you have your first performance rating. Most FAANG companies try to have managers support what's going to give you lasting longevity at the company, not necessarily on the team.
• cj 5y ago
  > I've told this to lots of people who work in other division (that I can trust) and they've said the easiest thing is to just accept it as it is and coast. I've never done that in my career and don't think I could do that. This is one of the reasons I usually disqualify people with long stints at FAANG on their resume. If you plan to get back into startups, you may not want to stick around for too long. Another option is to jump to another FAANG where maybe you’ll be lucky to find better people/culture.
• bombcar 5y ago
  Don't try to fix everything. Pick small battles and things and fix them one by one. You're not at a startup where "fix all the things ASAP or we die" is the driving force. Settle in and work on making things better, even if it's just to keep you in play as you investigate other options. A year of improving a team would give you a solid foundation for an internal transfer, for example.
  • zug_zug 5y ago
    Also try to get alignment within your team. Does everybody on the team agree these things are so broken? If not, try to find out things you all agree are problems and then fix those (be it by sharing information better, or picking better targets). I have no idea what you mean about "working weekends." It sounds like you just made up a line in your head "1 year" and then made up a story "I'll be such a victim if I have to fix every single thing myself in 1 year, it will require such suffering." Except nobody told you that you have to fix every single thing on your team in 1 year, why don't you fix half of it in 40 hour weeks, and if it's things people agree are problems and you outshine your team so much then I think you'll find it's nice to be appreciated. This plus the IQ comment, plus the nature of the question (how much deep down did you turn to HN because you thought we'd give you a simple quick fix? how much did you ask this "question" just to vent?) makes me think you might be a challenging person to work with. This could be a great opportunity for you try to attain technical mastery of yourself, your presentation, and your emotions/attitude.
• laurieg 5y ago
  "staffed with below-average IQ people" I'm not sure why your co-workers' IQ is your concern. To come out of the gate with a comment like this sounds like you have a strong disdain for them. Part of your reason for joining the company was the paycheck. I assume the checks aren't bouncing. My advice is the same advice I would give to many people: Learn from your coworkers. Understand the problems that the team and the company face. Make incremental improvements. If you really want to you can work late every day and at weekends. It's your choice. Bear in mind your job won't love you back.
  • tZqGafFdSbj5w34 5y ago
    I seem to be getting a lot of heat for this comment - fair enough, but I will expand on that. Before joining this company, I hired and managed teams across various startups. I don't think I would be speaking out of turn to say in every company we looked for aptitude and intelligence. I don't know what my previous or current colleagues literal IQs are, but you know a highly intelligent person when you meet and work with one. Through my entire FOUR MONTH interview process, I met a dozen people, all of whom would be considered highly intelligent. Maybe I am naive to assume that's what that interview process was designed for. And to be clear, those folks I interviewed with and many other people around me are highly intelligent. But the people I work with on daily basis, whom I did not meet in my interview, are categorically less intelligent and honestly at the root of most of the problems I've dealt with since starting. Sorry if it is rude, but I think it's an honest depiction of the situation.
    • nradov 5y ago
      That reminds me of the old joke about hell being just a sales demo. http://www.jokes.net/heavenandhell.htm http://www.jokes.net/heavenandhell.htm
    • chudi 5y ago
      Maybe you are mixing intelligence with jaded people? I mean if you are in a team and nobody wants to do the hard work, they will probably realized something extra that you haven't or you just have more ambition than your peers and actually want to work. In mega corporations there are all kinds of talented and motivated people, some people just want to coast at work and that's probably ok.
• deleted 5y ago
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• eplanit 5y ago
  "I've told this to lots of people who work in other division (that I can trust) and they've said the easiest thing is to just accept it as it is and coast" The Big Head character from Silicon Valley is again proved to be (like all the characters) spot-on accurate. Mike Judge is sorely underappreciated. My $0.02 advice: you seem smart, hard-working, and self-motivated. Become a consultant and be your own boss. Use the FAANG creds to demand a high rate. It's a market, and you can leverage your abilities as services you can offer. Work it to your advantage.
  • silentsea90 5y ago
    Where do you list yourself as a consultant?
• d357r0y3r 5y ago
  Take the money, max out 401k + after tax, save whatever you can after that, and get your fulfillment outside of work, just like the majority of other employees do. After a few years, you shouldn't need your FAANG job anymore. If you wanted to work on something interesting, you should have stayed at a startup. You wanted to make bank, and this is the price.
• arpyzo 5y ago
  Congrats on landing a FAANG position! As long as the environment isn't toxic, you can find a way to be content. Use this as an opportunity to learn how to adjust your thinking so you can thrive personally in a challenging environment. You may never get to a point where you love it, but you can probably get to a place where you are successful and can focus on the positives. Learn how to work well with challenging people. You'll encounter more of them later in your career. Again, adjust your thinking. These people almost certainly have their positive qualities. Work with those positive qualities and become a master at mitigating or avoiding their bad qualities. As far as working nights and weekend goes... do you really have to do that? Are other team members doing that? Big companies are not like startups. All the things will never get fixed, and you simply need to do your best with things in a permanently semi-broken state. I understand that you don't want to coast. You don't have to even if others are. Focus on doing an excellent job on your corner of the world. Your projects, your code, helping others, etc.. Worry less about the bigger picture. Also remember that it's not forever. This is an investment in your future career.
• fridif 5y ago
  Everything you've said indicates you are working at Amazon. Save all of the money and run away once you've lucked into a Google offer.
  • jhatemyjob 5y ago
    Not Amazon. Definitely Google.
    • tZqGafFdSbj5w34 5y ago
      :eyes:
    • fridif 5y ago
      While Google and Amazon might both suffer from a horrendous 10 year old code base all built in house, I can assure you that Google does not have high turnover lmao
      • rejectedandsad 5y ago
        Do you think people at Amazon are stupid then, if we can't get into a better company?
        • jhatemyjob 5y ago
          Yes. But not for that reason. You decided to work for Amazon. That's why you're stupid. Better to be homeless.
        • fridif 5y ago
          I got denied from Amazon twice, which actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I am now the lead dev and architect at a normal older company and I have complete freedom to deliver whatever my users ask for. I literally still can't believe how easy the development process is when you remove all of the BS at FAANG and worse, BigCorp. Nobody is stupid if they can pass Amazon's interview earnestly. But it is possible to lack motivation and professionalism. That's what I believe Amazon's SWE's are facing.
• jhatemyjob 5y ago
  Same boat here. I think I'm gonna stick it out for a year and go back to startups.
• LanceH 5y ago
  Not unique to FAANG.
  • spywaregorilla 5y ago
    Yep. Pretty much any large group of people will inevitably grow to feel largely incompetent.
• deleted 5y ago
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• zapataband1 5y ago
  I worked at Oracle for 8 years and there was zero effort into writing docs or automated env setup for developers. Like I literally couldn't code because there were no instructions for setting up a development environment.
• dudul 5y ago
  I would say just coast for a couple of years, cash the paycheck, try to find some time on the side to do your own building/learning. Then leave and use the "FAANG" line on your resume to command a better rate/salary at your next gig. Also, "below-average IQ people" really? that seems unnecessary.
• akyker 5y ago
  Did you do your research before picking this team? Did you interview the manager and the team members? There are literally hundreds if not thousands of teams at some of these companies. They are not all bad. Do your research. And put yourself on one you would enjoy.
• saurik 5y ago
  Quit. I know someone who went to work for Google and quit immediately (like, I think she worked there a week?) to do something better... didn't even seem to affect their interest in re-recruiting her AFAIK. She ended up working there a second time when the company she was working at got bought by Google... she quit again within a year. FAANGs suck: at their best they pay you a lot to do nothing and at their worst they pay you just enough to make you willing to do something evil.
  • deleted 5y ago
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• ernopp 5y ago
  It's much easier to move teams than move companies, so worth having a look around at other adjacent teams you could move to.
• leo_bloom 5y ago
  > If I do want to stick this out and turn this team around, I'm going to be working nights and weekends for at least a year - there's just too much to fix. Is it worth though? For whom are you fixing the issues? For the coworkers who will leave while you're still refactoring? For the charismatic boss? Your own personal pride? Also, is the work worth your overtime? If they staff "idiots", do they deserve your free time on the weekend? I applaud you for being able to care so much in what you describe is a terrible team.
• underdeserver 5y ago
  FAANGs are large. Find a team that sounds interesting, and ask to move.
• craig_asp 5y ago
  You won't be able to change much, in my opinion. So you have to choose whether you stay and do it their way, or go. There's a lot to be said about your situation, but I've found that oftentimes the only way to actually figure out if a job is for you is to try it out. I have had jobs in the past which looked really good from the outside, and I even got people recommending the employer and the team, and then when I started, it became painfully obvious that the place was nowhere near as good as expected. The opposite is actually less common in my experience - if if feels wrong and if people are telling you the company is not great, it probably isn't. There's a reason why people like working at large and reputable companies. For anyone reading your CV in the years to come, a few years spent at such a company would look impressive. You do get the benefits you mentioned, like stability and salary, so that's a net positive in your current situation. Spending a bit of time there, maybe 1-2 years would definitely not set you back too far anyway, in terms of tech, experience, etc. so it might not be as bas as you imagine it. Then, on the opposite side, if you really hate it now, maybe you won't start liking it down the line and it could be better if you throw in the towel sooner rather than later. I've had jobs where I was unpleasantly surprised at the start, then went through periods of liking my job and then hating it and then back to liking it, etc. All in all, when I look back, I tend to remember the better things, but I can also fully remember how awful it felt at times. If the primary reason for getting into the job was that you'd work on hard problems with top talent, and there's no way to get that in the near future, then why stay there at all? The current job market would probably allow you to find something very quickly. It's really about how you feel about the job, I think. It won't probably hurt to start looking around for better opportunities, without rushing it. It does not sound like an emergency. Plus, this way you'd give it some chance at least. It's tough to be at a job which you don't like and it's all about figuring your priorities and sticking to them.
• kapep 5y ago
  There is a middle ground between "working nights and weekends for at least a year" and "accept it as it is and coast". Why do you only consider the extremes? What's stopping you from improving things slowly without overworking yourself?
• yodsanklai 5y ago
  > staffed with below-average IQ people. This comment doesn't reflect well on you. I've recently joined a FAANG as well, and I've been disappointed with the code quality and the tooling. I expected better. Yet I feel there are tons of things to learn, and there are definitely bright people there. If anything, it reminds us that it's not easy to build software.
  • jnwatson 5y ago
    I think the biggest issue is that, even if you have great internal tooling today, it will be behind what's publicly available in a few years.
• tuckerconnelly 5y ago
  Quit and join a startup? Feel free to reach out, we're only hiring A+ players and solving hard problems.
  • silentsea90 5y ago
    Where?
    • tuckerconnelly 5y ago
      https://acelerate.io/ https://acelerate.io/ - building an OS for restaurants, founded by former DoorDash employee. Lots of scaling, data modeling, and reverse engineering challenges right now. We just raised $14.4mm led by Sequoia: https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/14/acelerate-raises-14-44m-series-a-to-turn-existing-restaurants-into-cloud-kitchens/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/14/acelerate-raises-14-44m-se... Our jobs board: https://boards.greenhouse.io/acelerate https://boards.greenhouse.io/acelerate
      • silentsea90 5y ago
        Congrats! That's awesome.
• SCdF 5y ago
  > below-average IQ people. .. > Any advice is appreciated. Not shitting on your colleagues with this generation's phrenology would be a great start. More generally, it sounds like you are starting with the idea that you're better and smarter than everyone you work with and only you can see the problems, as opposed to everyone you work with being (by and large) decent and hard working people who are making the best of a complicated situation. Learning about that situation, chesterton's fence etc, will be more productive that presuming everyone you work with is an idiot.
  • tequila_shot 5y ago
    This. I mean you tell me that you just only joined a FAANG...I don't know how you've come to the conclusion that "your team has below-average".
  • jasondigitized 5y ago
    Everyone needs to be mindful of Chesterstons fence when marching in with a strong sense of confidence with little knowledge of history.
    • npteljes 5y ago
      I didn't know it, so here goes: "Chesterton's fence is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood." Very reasonable.
  • snak 5y ago
    I don't necessarily agree with your point of view, but these two concepts were new and interesting to me. Posting their meanings for others that haven't heard of them either: > Phrenology Pseudoscience which involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits. The study of the conformation of the skull as indicative of mental faculties and traits of character. > Chesterton's fence Principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood.
    • 5y ago
• vmception 5y ago
  It’s just a 2 year stint my guy You’re not married or anything close to that and you don’t have an hour commute anymore either Maybe don’t work nights and weekends. The rest of your team lowers the bonus performance expectations, so just coast and collect yours
• floatingatoll 5y ago
  Consider trying less hard. Do mediocre work. They’re all still employed for doing mediocre work. It may be very difficult to produce poor quality work - you’ll have to overcome your “I’m brilliant” ego to do so — but you can trust that your peers, by your description anyways, are not encumbered by such ego.
• ibejoeb 5y ago
  >just accept it as it is and coast This is why you go to faang. Take the money.
• stuff4ben 5y ago
  Quit your whining and fix the damn problems. You sound like an entitled brat. If you're so smart compared to everyone else on your team, then you should have no problems fixing things. Why do you have to work nights and weekends? Are they asking you to? If not, then why put that on yourself? And even you work occasional nights and weekends, so what? Part of the joy of software development is the positive feedback loop of fixing something and moving on to the next broken thing. I did nights and weekends in the past because it was fun! I enjoyed problem solving. As someone in a movie once said, "Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That's all it is. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem... and you solve the next one... and then the next. And if you solve enough problems, you get to come home"
  • DudeInBasement 5y ago
    Probably not entitled, just disillusioned. They thought working for the best meant working with the best.
• rambambram 5y ago
  > "a FAANG" What's that? There's only five of 'm, just give us a name. ;)
  • chronic2703 5y ago
    OP swears it’s not Amazon
• dabernathy89 5y ago
  > I'm on a team that... is staffed with below-average IQ people. I would definitely not want to work with you.
• deleted 5y ago
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• nickcoury 5y ago
  I've worked at two different FAANG companies, and have a different view than some of the other commenters here. It sounds like you want to grow, learn, and advance, and I don't think you'll be happy kicking back and coasting. The first piece is that mobility is high between teams at almost every FAANG company. At my first one, I moved 3 months later because the initial team wasn't a great fit for me maintaining a lot of slow moving legacy systems. I moved to a team working on much more greenfield projects with more attention on the products themselves, and I thrived for several years. See what your options are to talk to other teams and move to one that aligns better with what you want to work on. The other related piece to this is that because mobility is so high, there do tend to be certain teams or areas with higher turnover and lower quality hires in some cases. No one wants to work on hard to maintain and neglected products, most good engineers that start there move on, and so it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. There are likely some extremely brilliant people to learn from at the company (even if not in your team), so try to seek out and find them in teams with openings. I agree it's easier to move after a year, but if the fit is really not right you can likely get an exception going to a team with an understanding manager (who you would enjoy working for anyways). Set up some non-formal meetings based on the internal job board and be open with all these experiences and concerns. Finally, the internal toolset is a real challenge, but I've come to take a slightly less pessimistic view on it. First off, the internal tooling tends to be worse on an individual workflow level, but accepting it has largely been better for me than fighting it (in most but not all cases). It's slower than a modern toolset, but still usually productive once you embrace what it's good at. The flip side is there are usually good reasons it's evolved to where it is today. Some of these reasons have to do with the scale of how many teams are working together, and understanding that will help explain why it is what it is. The other reasons are just that some of these companies have now been around a long time, and shifting to something better would be quite painful organizationally, meaning it's not ideal but the alternative would also be painful for the organization at a whole. You're new to it, so are at the opposite end of that.
• frankbreetz 5y ago
  Is everyone coasting and there is a lot of turnover? This seems to be somewhat conflicting. Is there a lot of turnover because it is so boring people are quiting? I find this unlikely. I used to work in the government and most people are pretty content coasting, especially if there is a faang salary to go with it. If people are getting pip'ed or fired it seems like it might be difficult to coast.
• anotheraccount9 5y ago
  I recall working for a company who programmed POS in Basic... The place was 20 years late (in any domain) and dysfunctionnal. YET, it is still in business today and making money on a regular basis. As for me I quit, because I could not focus on my role and instead focused on the environment.
• Buttons840 5y ago
  You don't have to "coast", you only have to learn to leave the stress and problems at work when the day ends. Work to fix things by day, try to find some enjoyment in it, be kind, and leave the troubles at the office when evening comes. If you can do this and manage to turn the project around you will have achieved far more than knowing the latest toolsets.
• warmcat 5y ago
  "staffed with below-average IQ people" I don't think anyone is in the position to judge other IQ's especially co-workers. These people passed the same interview loop as you. Just puts them in the same "IQ" bracket as you. Maybe they also feel the same way as you and don't want to put their effort in trying to turn this team around and just want to coast and switch later on. You need to get off your high horse and try to understand the motivations of the team by talking to them individually and bringing stuff up in standups/meetings and suggest ways to improve. Work with your manager. Maybe you can be the one who can turn this team around without burning out yourself. In the end, its just a job and trick is to not take everything personally.
• S_A_P 5y ago
  It seems to me that you went in with the wrong expectations. I don’t know the full details of your group and their tools and skills. I am not sure if you just want to work with the newest shiniest toys or if they really are bad. As I have progressed in my career I realized that latest isn’t always greatest and for me the most productive thing wins. If you think they really are lagging behind then the best thing you can do is take initiative. Start brown bag lunches and learning sessions. Suggest new methodology and try to get team buy in. I find that it is very gratifying to give back and improve things. Not to mention it could help you advance your career.
• deleted 5y ago
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• okareaman 5y ago
  Ex-Navy & programmer here: It feels like I am pointing out the obvious, but FAANGs have big problems, way bigger than a startup, and I'm not referring to only the technology. They have big organizational problems, like managing an aircraft carrier. They need to hire the smartest people and pay them a lot of money to manage those problems. Not every problem is sexy and many people are needed in the engine room to keep the fresh water distillery running and the ship sewage system from clogging. The U.S.'s $13 Billion Aircraft Carrier Has a Toilet Problem https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a31929628/uss-ford-toilet/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a319296...
  • RichardCA 5y ago
    I had a manager once who was ex-Navy (electronics specialist, not an officer). He approached management with a hard-nosed Type A mentality. He definitely went after people who he saw as coasting, and in some cases that was undoubtedly justified. He got results but there was also a lot of churn. He also made the mistake of taking too much on himself because he saw that as easier than the hard work of understanding and motivating people. After a while the atmosphere fell into bad faith, cynicism, and lack of trust. After some span of time he was moved to a position that kept his rank but removed his reports. The churn got so bad that upper mgmt had to deal with it, and HR also got involved. I think he's working at Amazon now.
    • deleted 5y ago
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    • fortuna86 5y ago
      > I think he's working at Amazon now. Sounds about right.
  • beeboop 5y ago
    Considering it's budgeted to run at a cost of $1.5 billion a year and it actually runs at $2.5 billion a year, a toilet flushing problem that costs a couple million a year doesn't really seem notable beyond "lol poop". I hate how our government spends and manages money so poorly.
• fghfghfghfghfgh 5y ago
  From a manager point of view: In your shoes I would make a decision to either fix/improve the situation or leave immediately. If you decide for the former then make sure you have support from your management and own that decision. Be the one who turned the subpar division around. If it is as bad as you say you can hardly screw it up any worse. That's a privileged position to start from - difficult to fail. I doubt your colleagues are really below average IQ - but perhaps their skills could be better. So teach them. Be the leader and mentor they likely never had. Have patience and build a team. Fix the high impact, low effort problems first. Get some fast successes - they inspire and breed appetite for more. Don't exhaust your resources. Chip away one small problem at a time. It adds up faster than you think. Create a vision for where you want to be in one year. Communicate that goal at every opportunity. Believe in it and other people will believe as well. It doesn't matter if you reach it within an arbitrary deadline - it matters that it exists in the first place. Whatever you do, don't coast.
• birdoinzoink 5y ago
  I've worked at these companies for several years, gotten promoted, shuffled around internally, etc...it can be frustrating and demoralizing for sure. But it can be rewarding too, and I saw plenty of people coast without stressing too much. Here are my survival tips. Tl;Dr, calm down and try to be positive at work. * Things are never as serious as they seem, and deadlines are rarely as solid as they seem. These companies have inertia and capital, and they understand that estimates are not promises. * Check in with your teammates regularly, and avoid giant complicated code reviews. Be ready to change direction quickly, and don't worry too much about throwing away a few days of work if a better solution presents itself. * Try to get a feel for how the in-house tools work. Even a basic understanding of how large companies handles things like deployments might be valuable in the future. * Ignore the politics. Try to help your peers, and be nice to them even when they're annoying. They may or may not be "low-IQ", but as long as your teammates feel like you help them out, you should get good annual reviews without needing to work more than 40hrs/wk. * If you want to transfer internally, be up-front about it with your manager. In-house transfer applications aren't always private.
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• skybrian 5y ago
  One possibility not mentioned is to connect with people working on other teams at the company and look for ways to build bridges. At Google I had a 20% project that got another team interested in working with me, so that’s where I transferred after a while. Trying to turn a team around by working really hard seems like a good way to burn yourself out. Whether the team succeeds is likely beyond your control. Be helpful where you can, but let the manager worry about it. It’s hard to tell much from a single comment, but referring to team members as “low IQ” seems like a warning sign that you might need to work on your people skills. Sure, you’re disappointed, but that’s not their fault so be careful not to use that as an excuse to take it out on them with the excuse of “raising standards” or some other justification like that. Been there, regretted being a jerk.
• jrm4 5y ago
  I regret to inform you that you got suckered; anyone thinking of working for a FAANG should thing about it not like a new and exciting tech thing. History moved fast, you're effectively working in an old crusty company that occasionally does cool and interesting things.
• testing_1_2_3_4 5y ago
  it's Amazon isn't it? lol
• biesnecker 5y ago
  Leave? I work for a FAANG, and have for a while. Maybe I have below average IQ, too, but I've met and had the pleasure of working with some of the smartest, hardest working, kindest people in my career here. Some assholes too, of course, but we're all human. Everything is built in-house because it needs to solve problems at a scale that you've never worked at. Be humble. If the tooling is terrible, congrats! There's a bunch of impact in your future making the tooling better. And because it's a big company, it cares a lot about marginal productivity improvements like better tooling, and will reward you for it. That's pretty different than my experiences at startups that are struggling for survival. Maybe you picked a bad team. That's a possibility, because large companies are less homogenous than startups. But that also means that there are good teams, whereas if you pick a bad startup the whole thing is bad. Sounds like you didn't do the homework you should have before choosing a team. Maybe, again, be humble and accept that you have things to learn, even if it's just how to see red flags prior to joining a team, and use what you've learned when choosing a team next time. Good luck!
  • certeoun 5y ago
    > Maybe I have below average IQ No you don't. I find OP's bold characterization of his co-workers inflammatory. Below average in general means "borderline retarded"[1]. You are obviously not below average. Stop saying that, please. [1] https://paulcooijmans.com/intelligence/iq_ranges.html https://paulcooijmans.com/intelligence/iq_ranges.html I think the issue is because of people who care less about learning a topic deeply. Understanding why something works at all etc. This might be the actual complaint of OP.
    • biesnecker 5y ago
      Sorry, I know I don’t have below average IQ, I was being snarky. :-)
      • fortuna86 5y ago
        Or maybe IQ is an arbitrary measure with no real meaning? Its greatest value seems to be insecure people using it to feel superior to others.
• mkleinstadt 5y ago
  OP joined Amazon without a doubt. (Build everything in house, working nights and weekends, rigid team-switching rules.) I just interviewed there and the onsite presented more red flags than a Soviet military parade. Would definitely recommend treating them somewhat differently from the other FANG companies
  • Arainach 5y ago
    When someone joins Google or Microsoft or Facebook, they say "I joined Google/Microsoft/Facebook". When they join Amazon, they say "I joined a FAANG company". It's amazingly how well it correlates.
    • rejectedandsad 5y ago
      Do you think that’s because Amazon is a lesser company? I work at Amazon and I’m depressed as hell because of it - not because the work is bad, but because you people think people like me are subhuman. I’ve studied leetcode for years but apparently my IQ is just too low to get into a better company - what should I do? Is my career over, or should I just accept being considered a subhuman for the rest of my life?
      • Arainach 5y ago
        I don't work at Amazon and never have, so take my opinions with a grain of salt. I have worked at multiple other "FAANG"-caliber organizations, so add a few more grains. Let's start with the obvious: "FAANG" was a term coined by financial types, not technical types, based on stock valuations rather than any particular technical merits. Exactly what companies are in it are controversial - Microsoft has the pedigree and the culture, they just didn't have the stock price (at that time). Netflix hires smart people but has never been in the same league as the rest in my personal opinion - they're too small and they have only one product. Now, back to your question. If I had to guess, it's primarily about stigma. If I was working at Amazon, I would be fully aware of their reputation for abusive employee treatment, grinding fresh college graduates into a burnt out pulp faster than their RSUs can vest, poor work life balance, and so on. I'd be tired of answering the same questions about all of the above. I'd be aware that everyone already has their opinions about Amazon, that what I say isn't going to change much, and would probably deflect in the hope of getting interesting responses before everyone inevitably notices that my question lines up with all the feedback they've heard from their former-Amazon friends about the sad state of the internal tech stack, the working conditions, etc.
• seahawks78 5y ago
  "Instead, I'm on a team that has and horrendous turnover and is staffed with below-average IQ people." "This company builds EVERYTHING in house, and the toolset is like going backwards in my career 10 years." I am guessing this is either Amazon or Google. I would think that this is most likely Amazon ("horrendous turnover": 50% of people who join Amazon leave within the first 2 years). In LinkedIn you will routinely find people from Amazon showing their badges stating that they completed X+ number of years. Have you seen people from other places routinely doing this? That itself is a dead giveaway to the critical eye. Btw, your IQ comparison is extremely derogatory. So please edit that out.
  • Noumenon72 5y ago
    What's wrong with being derogatory? If I want to go to the bar and complain that my coworkers are all so ugly it hurts to look at them, that doesn't hurt them, and you could genuinely sympathize. Edit: below-average IQ people can be genuinely painful to work with. If you recast it as "I have to explain simple things to my coworkers repeatedly, they don't grasp abstractions, forget what was said in meetings, and make random changes without understanding why", you should be able to sympathize with that. It's also a sign your team is considered low status, and you might not be able to accept that.
  • rejectedandsad 5y ago
    There are lots of Google orgs with horrendous turnover. You just don’t hear about it because they move to other teams.
• tZqGafFdSbj5w34 5y ago
  I appreciate all the comments (even the criticism). In so many ways, this post has already helped me see things more clearly. One final thought is that I know I can quit - that isn't the question. I could make more money (with less stability) consulting, or find a middle ground at a Series C+ company. What I probably should have said in my OP is that quitting feels wrong. I've never quit a position after three months and this is honestly the first time everything is telling that quitting is the right decision. As dysfunctional as this team is, quitting would feel like letting them down, and it just isn't something I've done before. But again, these comments have given me perspective and will make me give this more thought.
  • TigeriusKirk 5y ago
    You don't owe them anything beyond your best effort during the time you work there. There's nothing wrong with leaving a broken work situation.
  • chenmike 5y ago
    It sounds like you know this job isn't a good fit for your disposition and ambitions. Staying somewhere where you're not a good fit won't really do anyone any favors, and a FAANG will have no problems replacing you. I was in your shoes a few years ago. It was a dream of mine to work at a FAANG and when I got there, it was super disappointing for a lot of the same reasons (IQ comment aside). I consistently got good/great performance reviews without working nights/weekends and I could've kept coasting for a long time but I would've been miserable. I left and I'm back in the startup world now, which has its own problems but I'm happier. The one thing I wasn't able to get from the post is what it is you actually want out of your job. It sounds like working with smart people is one component. You mentioned an efficient toolset. Is that it? I doubt it. It's probably worth taking the time to sit and figure that out before you move onto your next thing. As software developer we're in a unique position of choice, and IMO we should enjoy that while it lasts. It's not guaranteed to be like this forever. Life, and your career, is just way too short to spend in a place that you know is wrong.
  • zug_zug 5y ago
    There are plenty of reasons you might want to stay - to try to change teams, to try to get better at working with imperfect teams, to get better at establishing personal boundaries (not owning every problem you run into), or your resume. I would likely stay in your position for at least 1 more month to give things a chance to change. But a sense of obligation is not a good reason. You owe the company and the team nothing, your employment is fundamentally an at-will business deal, anybody who tells you that you're all "friends" or "family" is very confused or downright lying. There's a pretty good chance the rest of your team has almost no emotional investment in the "success" of the team and couldn't care less if you leave.
• 71a54xd 5y ago
  Your post wreaks of working at Amazon. I hate to tell you, but Amazon is the lowest hanging fruit of all FAANGs. They hire and fire at above average rates to try to find the best and then bait the rest to stay on with stock. If you're at Amazon and you think things are going to get better, let me tell you, they aren't. Find a way out immediately unless you're okay basically moving forward with the same schizo management and dev policies. Hope you find some work you enjoy!
• borplk 5y ago
  You have a throw away at least mention which one it is!
• gdsdfe 5y ago
  sorry but if you're calling your colleagues "below-average IQ people" you're just an asshole
• softwaredoug 5y ago
  Things will be very team dependent at large companies. I worked at some seemingly boring defense contractors on paper, but had a really cool team, and worked on a hard problem set... We all gelled well and everyone was smart. But I also know if really dysfunctional teams at large companies that would otherwise sound exciting and interesting on paper...
• duxup 5y ago
  Has your experience been with startups entirely? I wonder if that is the thing here. I think perhaps you maybe just weren't exposed to 'older' companies in the past and mostly worked in greenfield type situations? >there's just too much to fix. Welcome to any company that isn't a startup? Debt, tech, or otherwise (processes, etc) will exist if a company is old enough. That's just how it is, read up on Google enough and they've reworked their own systems numerous times when things didn't work anymore as they grew. Smart companies, dumb companies, everyone accumulate debt as old systems don't do the thing right anymore. That's not wrong, that's just life. At those startups you worked at, everyone was laying the foundation for that and maybe just didn't know it ;) Also I wouldn't assume that people are dumb because they don't want to fix it all... they maybe know, just also know it won't all get fixed / isn't worth it by pounding out weekends and nights all the time. I'd be wary of thinking 'these people are stupid / won't put in the work' when it might be just that they aren't going to kill themself fixing it all. Lotta assumptions on my part here, just some food for thought.
• im3w1l 5y ago
  My first advice is "fuck the haters" here saying you shouldn't judge your coworkers. You absolutely should. With that out of the way: Do you want to become a leader? Do you want to lead these people? Is it realistic to do so? If you are their better than this might be a good way to handle it. If you are unable or unwilling to lead them, then you should probably transfer out asap. They'll pull you down, and you will notice it happen and you will resent them for it.
• chronic2703 5y ago
  Let me guess. Amazon? OP you will be PIP’ed (fired) within 6-9 months anyway.
• sagivo 5y ago
  I've been in two FAANG companies and I can tell you know - go back to startups. I came from startups and couldn't wrap my head around how slow things are. In FAANG everything is promotion driven so people spend most of their energy reverse engineering the system and choosing work that will help them get promoted. It's a never ending, beautifully designed rat race. You will spend weeks on performance reviews, evaluations and other HR corporate mambo jumbo. If you spend more than 50% of your time on actual work you are lucky. If you have a startup mindset you should go back to startups. You will be more productive, happy and grow faster.
• clownpenis_fart 5y ago
  working in the online advertisment mines is not that glamorous? shocking I'm really impressed how faangs managed to make "showing targeted penis enlargement ads" sound like a hard and interesting problem though
• zzzeek 5y ago
  i would like to propose indexed syntax for FAANG. example: "I work for FAANG[2]" or "I work for FAANG[0]". would be so much more fun naming your employer !
• lostcolony 5y ago
  So you've achieved a goal of yours, are getting excellent pay, and gotten a FAANG on your resume. Don't kill yourself now working nights and weekends. But do take the time to evaluate what is important to you. You can probably get hired most places you'd care to work now, so...where is that? What makes a place ideal for you? What would you be willing to give up to make that happen? I think cooling your heels there for a while is a given; that might be coasting, sure, but it also might be determining specific small areas within the company to pour yourself into to try and improve. After you've been there a bit, see if things have improved, as you've gotten more context. If not, you're in a better position to move on; you've now got the FAANG on your resume, any recruiters you talk to will know not to lowball you, and you'll have spent time thinking about what actually makes you happy in a workplace and can look to seek it out. But I will say, having worked in 5-6 companies now over a 12 year career, no place will have everything you want, and no place will stay the same. Figure out what is most important to you. It might be compensation and stability; it might be interesting problems, it might be something else. If it's either of those two, though, you may want to look outside of your main place of employ to figure out how to meet the other need; job for compensation, personal work for interesting problems, for instance. Or get permission for some moonlighting and take some contract work from some old contacts maybe.
• fassssst 5y ago
  Re: your IQ comment, I recommend reading “Mindset” by Carol Dweck.
• lostmsu 5y ago
  So what is your IQ exactly?
• ep103 5y ago
  You're getting a lot of heat from HN about the IQ comment here, instead of being give actual helpful advice or given a charitable reading of the intent behind your statement. (Is it just me, or has HN's quality dropped somewhat significantly over the last ~1.5 years?) My experience is similar to yours, however. I have managed, led, and been a part of teams at small startups for the last 10 years of my career. I recently joined a name brand, large tech company (not FAANG, but maybe a half step down from there. They certainly think of themselves as a FAANG-type company). I've had the same experience as you. There's much more money. Our compensations are higher. The technology choices are more cutting edge and expensive. But the toolset my team was using to actually develop, is worse than what I've used for the last decade. The people I interviewed with ranged from extremely intelligent and skilled, to the sort of rude know-it-all engineering type you hear about related to faang interviews. The interview process was so difficult that I was on track to fail it, until an upper manager reached out and personally interviewed me to see what was going wrong, and corrected the process. But my team, while great people I enjoy working with, are a very, very considerable step down in terms of skill, ability, and knowledge from the last team I managed. And those guys were making easily 50k+ / year less than my current team members. I also thought I was joining to solve A+ hard problems, and I'm also having a bit of a hard time with it. I started at the beginning of 2021, I'm taking a couple of approaches, mentally to this. Firstly, I'm not leaving until my stock options finish vesting. So that means I'm in this for the long haul. Second, the fact that I'm so much more knowledgable than the rest of my team, I hope, should set me up for promotions down the line. I think part of what's going on here, is that this company is so_much_larger than the startups I've worked for in the past, means that ICs genuinely don't get to see most of the truly difficult problems, because true difficulty gets spread out over so many more people, and solved by people higher up the totem pole than a lowly IC. FWIW, this desire has made me really dislike the current Covid WFH arrangement. As great as WFH is, getting promoted is so much harder when you lack consistent facetime with the people around you. Thirdly, I really, really, really blame the modern FAANG inspired Leetcode interview process. My teammates clearly have the ability to solve leetcode style questions. And in the blue moon opportunity that such a question comes up in code, it is usually solved pretty quickly. But actually important coding skills? I will be keeping this in mind as much as possible when I vet out companies when doing future interviews, and I very much hope this industry fad changes over time. Fourth: the fact that I can develop so much quicker and cleaner than my coworkers, means that I can take advantage of the fact that this company has many more different types of technology than I would be exposed to at a start up. I will be spending that extra time bumping up my own skillset, so as to be a more desirable candidate once my options vest. However, all of the above is specific to one assumption: I ultimately like this company, and enjoy the job. I am not working nights and weekends at a company I hate. So if that's the position you find yourself in, I would suggest leaving. The mere fact that something is a FAANG doesn't automatically mean its a good job. Weigh your income vs your options vs your happiness, and make a decision. The "FAANG" title holds very little weight in that decision, except as a good-looking line-item on your resume.
• Sn0wCoder 5y ago
  The grass is always greener on the other side. Having been through many companies you always think it’s just this one that uses bad tools, does not test the way I think they should, time frames are unrealistic, managers have no technical experience. Truth is it’s all of them. You got your foot in the door now start looking for that dream spot, even though not many will find it and if you do congratulations you are in the minority. With your attitude maybe they just want to see if you can pay your dues before they put you on something you might deem important.
• darksaints 5y ago
  I see you joined Amazon. Do what every other smart person does, and quit.
• Tade0 5y ago
  I don't think there's any shame in rage-quitting a FAANG company. I was once in a high-profile, ambitious open-source (but not FLOSS) project which had much the same NIH syndrome as you're experiencing, but didn't have the staff/budget to maintain their tooling properly and I hated it to the point where I got myself fired, because I didn't have the integrity to quit on my own. If you can change something, try. If you notice that it's futile, quit. I can tell you from experience that trying to suffer through something while having no agency is really really really bad for your mental health.
• poof131 5y ago
  You are on a bad team it seems. I wouldn’t blame your teammates and look at how you got there. They are probably better than you realize but motivation can play a huge role in interactions and performance. You’ve said in a comment you have been at startups hiring and building teams. Those are growing teams. You are used to growing, building, and acting with accountability. Now you are on a team with turnover, that probably isn’t growing. Why? Is the team going to be shut down because of low value? Is it in a purely a maintenance function that will just be starved of resources? Is there bad leadership that can’t fix problems and has unrealistic expectations? Likely whatever is wrong is out of your control. Don’t burn out trying to save something you might not even understand. Do a good job and try to learn “big org”. Look for a different team. Focus on extracurriculars. And find a new job at the year mark if it doesn’t get better (or earlier if you have too). Good luck.
• dehrmann 5y ago
  See if you can transfer internally. If not, quit. I suspect that even if they're not excited about you transferring, if you're willing to quit over it, they'll make something happen. Teams at large companies are all different (small companies, too), and the way this reads, I don't think you'll be effective with any amount of toughing it out, and it will end up being more stressful than it's worth.
• MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  I work at a fortune 500 company right now and it's regular people who do mundane office jobs. Some just happen to be programmers. I love the boring lame talk because it gets me out of work.
• DoreenMichele 5y ago
  An established organization will work fundamentally differently from a startup. For some people, this is a hard transition to make. If you want to actually make it work, you need to meet them halfway and assume that they know something about working in an established organization that you don't. Tossing out their institutional knowledge will likely be a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. This just may not be for you. After doing things a particular way, doing them a completely different way tends to be a trial by fire and most people don't want that and won't tolerate it if they don't have some personal crisis forcing the decision. If you have other viable options that are more comfortable for you, there's no shame in pursuing those instead. If you don't, you need to spend less time feeling superior and more time trying to figure out how things actually work (as opposed to assuming your way is best in all things).
• nexus2045 5y ago
  How low can their IQ be if they can solve Leetcode mediums in 30 minutes?
  • randomopining 5y ago
    Is that what it takes? Not hard levels?
• lawrenceyan 5y ago
  > staffed with below-average IQ people Just as an FYI, this comment comes off as incredibly arrogant to anyone who’s going to read it.
• marto1 5y ago
  Welcome to big tech corp paranoia. Enjoy your stay! But seriously don't hold on to something that makes no sense to you whatsoever. I'm pretty sure management won't turn the boat for you especially at the scale of your complaints so think about your exit strategy.
• coryrc 5y ago
  Change teams or leave. Lots of people change right away.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• giantg2 5y ago
  "and is staffed with below-average IQ people." What makes you suspect this? Even if the hiring process is full of BS, that BS usually requires a higher IQ to learn and deal with like LeetCode, right?
• golover721 5y ago
  One piece of advice. It is easy to start with an existing team, product or company and immediately find things that in your opinion are done “wrong”. One of the fastest ways to alienate yourself is to come in with a sledgehammer and start trying to change everything after only a couple of months on the job. Step back and realize there is or was likely a good reason that certain choices were made. Try to really understand the why. Maybe that will change your opinion of some of the choices. Then armed with that understanding you can suggest and make improvements in a way that brings value to the team.
• proofbygazing 5y ago
  Cracking up at the response to this thread. The comments here show how desperately tech workers need the validation of being in the Gifted Class and if you insinuate there's a culture of stupidity in FAANG they fall to pieces. No comment on your predicament, best of luck and look for anybody smart and hustling around you that you can latch on to.
  • rejectedandsad 5y ago
    Honestly the reason why I’m so depressed/sometimes suicidal is because I’m part of a FANG that everyone considers to be stupid and poor. I wish people ever had given me any validation. OPs fixation on IQ to denigrate their coworkers is pretty scummy though.
    • DoreenMichele 5y ago
      Lots of people are suicidal because of real world, intractable problems. Then if you say you are suicidal, they say you just have a mental health issue, not "a real problem." It's one of the suckiest things humans currently do to each other on a regular basis in an "evil is prosaic" kind of way.
• cowanon22 5y ago
  It seems unlikely that your co-workers have low IQ, but it does go to show that doing well on algorithms and toy puzzles doesn't necessarily lead to an interesting job. It seems odd that you would be assigned to a team that didn't personally interview you - is this normal practice at FAANG companies? Your co-workers may just be zoned out and collecting a paycheck - at some point the workload can become so impossible that you just don't care anymore. This is especially true if you don't care about a company's mission, product, or customers. Unfortunately the tech boom has led to high turnover at some places, and people just jumping to the next big salary instead of picking a good long term fit. The tech industry is big enough that you can do what makes you happy - the big name places sometimes aren't a great fit. I've found a pretty good career working at mid-tier Fortune 500 companies. There a lot of good opportunities all across the US if you're willing to forgo SV salaries, know your stuff (and can learn new tech quickly), and focus on helping the business instead of the latest tech fad. (FYI, I make 175k in the mid-west with 40hr work weeks and a 10 min commute, 5 weeks PTO, great healthcare)
• jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
  Seems like a pretty good problem to have. Keep in mind all jobs are temporary arrangements. You're free to leave any time you like. I'd say just collect your checks and look for a job with better coworkers.
• dc3k 5y ago
  > staffed with below-average IQ people > I'm going to be working nights and weekends for at least a year I find it highly amusing that you're complaining about coworkers being unintelligent then following it up with "I'm going to spend the majority of my free time giving free labour to a trillion dollar company for a year"
• dennis_jeeves 5y ago
  Bear it out for a while, make sure your checks don't bounce, like laurieg pointed out :). Then jump ship after a few months for an even better paycheck.
• srswtf123 5y ago
  > I feel like I've made a terrible decision and don't know what to do next. My advice is straightforward. First, stay in the position until an adequate amount of time has passed so it won't raise eyebrows on your resume. Second, begin looking for other work doing what you want to do, using this job as a stepping stone. You took a chance, it didn't work out as expected. That's life. Move on to the next thing!
• gregjor 5y ago
  It’s bad enough reading self-described A+ high IQ “players” bitching about stupid managers, customers, and users. It’s worse to see that hubris and arrogance turned on co-workers. So much to fix, with only you to do it. I’m guessing you won’t last long because no one will want to work with you.
• pavlus 5y ago
  Looks like those people joined FAANG to work with people like you. So be the person you wanted to work with yourself.
• alecbz 5y ago
  Can you be more specific about the problems? This is some combination of: * Different companies do things differently and you should have some humility about the way things are done here * There's definitely a lot of cruft that can accumulate at larger companies, but the question is how much is it stopping you from being productive and getting the work done * There's definitely shit teams at FAANGs, and by definition you're more likely to land at one coming in because of the turnover
• faangiq 5y ago
  I also work at Amazon and although some of my colleagues are fantastic, it definitely has the most variance in IQ I’ve experienced. Particularly in the non SWE roles. There are very few “hard problems” being solved. Most problems are figuring out the labyrinthine toolset, legacy code, and patching updates. And brutal soul crushing bureaucracy. The money is good but if you don’t need it you should leave ASAP given your situation.
• smsm42 5y ago
  No advice but I've never worked for FAANG though considered it several times (yes, had offers too) but ultimately decided against it, because I suspected something like you described would await me. The money would be good but the price could be a part of my soul. Thanks for providing data to support my decision.
• cutthegrass2 5y ago
  Should be nice and easy for you to stand out amongst your peers then.
• SergeAx 5y ago
  The lesson here is that you shouldn't just join a FAANG company, you should aim for particular teams inside it. Any big company has a lot of operational needs, and not all of them are hard and exciting, on the contrary: most of those just aren't.
  • WelcomeShorty 5y ago
    Exactly, like I paraphrase it to "young colleagues": Large companies / countries do not exist, they're made up out of small groups and picking the right group makes the difference between awesome and hell. You will not find a large company with stellar players only.
• randprecision 5y ago
  Expectations are the thief of joy.
• Gaussian 5y ago
  Put in some time and get out. It will help your resume, but not your soul. I have been working with a FAANG recently, one that builds EVERYTHING in house. Almost comical. There are great engineers all over the place, but no cohesive strategy or overarching sense for product outside of a couple of niches. Not a great situation.
• rudyrigot 5y ago
  I work for a FAANG-like company right now, and used to work for Apple, and worked for startups too. Some thoughts. • Engineers in large tech companies are neither better nor worse engineers than in startups on average. They just work on different things. • Large tech companies are a lot more heterogeneous than it looks at first. I had a great experience with talented and respectful people at Apple, while a friend of mine was in another engineering division also at Apple, and… not so much. It’s so large, it can’t be the same throughout the company. It wouldn’t be surprising that your team is struggling to hire quality talent, but some others have an easier time, for all kinds of reasons. • But each company does have some common cultural traits you’re likely to find throughout all its teams though. My current company takes a lot about the importance of work-life balance, while Apple told us at bootcamp on day 1 that we’d be working our asses off. In both cases, it turned out true. So, one FAANG might be wrong for you, but another FAANG might be better. And one team in a FAANG might be wrong for you, but another team in the same FAANG might be better. One reason I like larger companies is because once you’re in, they’re so large that it’s easy to switch to another role all the while having a lot of insider information about what you’re getting into, way more than if you were to switch companies. But yeah, a lot of the time they want to keep you on one team for a little bit first, so at least they’re getting some ROI on their efforts to find you.
• KernelPryanic 5y ago
  Just quit and don’t torture yourself