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The "FAANG has A+ players solving hard problems" meme is a myth that people need to believe to support idea that working at a FAANG company is guaranteed to be

The "FAANG has A+ players solving hard problems" meme is a myth that people need to believe to support idea that working at a FAANG company is guaranteed to be the apex of your career. No one motivates themselves by saying, "I'm going to do the same work I'd do with the same caliber of colleagues as I have currently." This is the tech version of the American Dream, where we're not employed by Google yet, but will be in the near future. FAANG companies certainly have a lot of very bright engineers. There's no disputing that. And they contend with some really thorny problems that admit no easy solutions, such as scale and content moderation. But there's also plenty of smaller companies that have difficult problems with very sharp coworkers. Of course, they don't have the same prestige.

mooreds 5y ago
> But there's also plenty of smaller companies that have difficult problems with very sharp coworkers. Of course, they don't have the same prestige. Or money. Or visibility. Or value on your resume (in certain circles). But what smaller companies have that I've found big companies don't: a distinct lack of places to hide. Sure, you can get folks who don't work out (I've been one!) but at all the small companies I've worked out, everyone is pulling together and no one is really slacking. My theory is that it's too easy to see when someone is slacking at a smallco, so folks don't do it. I find that delightful.
- smsm42 5y ago
  Value in the resume cuts both ways. If somebody comes to me for an interview having a spectacular company in the list, I'd certainly be interested. But they better have some good story to tell because if it's just "oh I built an ACID webservice for internal tool for organizing meetings about when the kitchen snack supply should be replenished" I wouldn't be overly impressed and they'd better have some other skills to impress. It certainly creates some interest, but it can also create disappointment.

mooreds 5y ago

> But there's also plenty of smaller companies that have difficult problems with very sharp coworkers. Of course, they don't have the same prestige. Or money. Or visibility. Or value on your resume (in certain circles). But what smaller companies have that I've found big companies don't: a distinct lack of places to hide. Sure, you can get folks who don't work out (I've been one!) but at all the small companies I've worked out, everyone is pulling together and no one is really slacking. My theory is that it's too easy to see when someone is slacking at a smallco, so folks don't do it. I find that delightful.

smsm42 5y ago
Value in the resume cuts both ways. If somebody comes to me for an interview having a spectacular company in the list, I'd certainly be interested. But they better have some good story to tell because if it's just "oh I built an ACID webservice for internal tool for organizing meetings about when the kitchen snack supply should be replenished" I wouldn't be overly impressed and they'd better have some other skills to impress. It certainly creates some interest, but it can also create disappointment.