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This is pretty much the norm many FAANG companies * — mobility is a huge driver of competition among internal teams to create a great culture, provide growth op

This is pretty much the norm many FAANG companies * — mobility is a huge driver of competition among internal teams to create a great culture, provide growth opportunities and do impactful work. Downside is that some important but not sexy or hard to quantify work gets ignored or avoided because employees have a ton of choice to move (usually after a 1 year min stint) * At least at Facebook and Google. At Apple I have heard that people are encouraged to stay in one area and become experts in that area. Mobility seems to be less of an emphasis.

ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
Yup. It's a huge mechanism for success, it punishes managers for not treating their developers well. Especially since other teams can see all of the code you wrote. If youre good, no amount of politics from your manager will stop other teams from figuring that out and hiring you. I think this ability to quickly move around is heavily underrated.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Can managers not block transfers?
  - ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
    It depends on the company, but generally as long as you havent received performance concerns, you can switch.
    - yourapostasy 5y ago
      > ...but generally as long as you havent received performance concerns, you can switch. Bad manager is just incentivized to lodge preemptive mild performance reports against his best performers. Not enough to become a stain on the team members, just enough to prevent them from switching teams. Bonus to the bad manager: they are rewarded for keeping compensation plans from expanding as much as other teams because the mild performance reports help curve down pay adjustments. The only practical way I've seen to counter this response is strong leadership over such a manager that recognizes what is actually happening and has a quiet talk with the manager. That rarely happens. I'd like to hear what policies others have seen that mitigate this dynamic.
- elefanten 5y ago
  But does it result in the same quality of product? My broad experience is "no"
  - ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
    It definitely does, it exposes the bad managers. Attrition can be used as a gauge across an organization to shed light on who isn't doing their job well.
deepsun 5y ago
Important but not sexy work often gets offloaded to onsite contractors, who also don't play career games (in FAANG, not in their actual employers). Maybe only Apple doesn't work vendors, others are pretty good with it.
pjbeam 5y ago
Amazon as well.
peakaboo 5y ago
I don't care. Hear me out. Why is the entire IT culture trying to do whatever Google and the FAANG companies are doing? Its ridiculous. The rest of the world have completely different needs, completely different skill levels, and completely different management. There is literally nothing the rest of the world has incommon with FAANG. What they do will not work for the rest of us. I'm super tired of hearing about what they do. I do not look up to them and I'm not impressed by them. Remember tech before FAANG? If you don't, you probably think I'm a raving lunatic because today, it sure seems every single engineer loves whatever FAANG does.

ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago

Yup. It's a huge mechanism for success, it punishes managers for not treating their developers well. Especially since other teams can see all of the code you wrote. If youre good, no amount of politics from your manager will stop other teams from figuring that out and hiring you. I think this ability to quickly move around is heavily underrated.

MattGaiser 5y ago
Can managers not block transfers?
- ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
  It depends on the company, but generally as long as you havent received performance concerns, you can switch.
  - yourapostasy 5y ago
    > ...but generally as long as you havent received performance concerns, you can switch. Bad manager is just incentivized to lodge preemptive mild performance reports against his best performers. Not enough to become a stain on the team members, just enough to prevent them from switching teams. Bonus to the bad manager: they are rewarded for keeping compensation plans from expanding as much as other teams because the mild performance reports help curve down pay adjustments. The only practical way I've seen to counter this response is strong leadership over such a manager that recognizes what is actually happening and has a quiet talk with the manager. That rarely happens. I'd like to hear what policies others have seen that mitigate this dynamic.
elefanten 5y ago
But does it result in the same quality of product? My broad experience is "no"
- ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
  It definitely does, it exposes the bad managers. Attrition can be used as a gauge across an organization to shed light on who isn't doing their job well.

deepsun 5y ago

Important but not sexy work often gets offloaded to onsite contractors, who also don't play career games (in FAANG, not in their actual employers). Maybe only Apple doesn't work vendors, others are pretty good with it.

pjbeam 5y ago

Amazon as well.

peakaboo 5y ago

I don't care. Hear me out. Why is the entire IT culture trying to do whatever Google and the FAANG companies are doing? Its ridiculous. The rest of the world have completely different needs, completely different skill levels, and completely different management. There is literally nothing the rest of the world has incommon with FAANG. What they do will not work for the rest of us. I'm super tired of hearing about what they do. I do not look up to them and I'm not impressed by them. Remember tech before FAANG? If you don't, you probably think I'm a raving lunatic because today, it sure seems every single engineer loves whatever FAANG does.