5 ms·

Anyone who has worked with "WITCH" knows there is no comparison here. WITCH operates at high scale, low cost, low skill, low quality contractors. They cannot be

Anyone who has worked with "WITCH" knows there is no comparison here. WITCH operates at high scale, low cost, low skill, low quality contractors. They cannot be compared to full time FAANG engineers.

mrsuprawsm 5y ago
That was the purpose of the parent article's assertion, to illustrate that same point.
shubb 5y ago
I see threads elsewhere full of "I joined a FANG hoping to make amazing algorithms and push computer science forward but I'm just building dashboards and changing button colours", so I'm not 100% sure the work content is different. In 5 years, I'd expect a WITCH engineer to be exposed to and deeply understand many industries and companies. I'd expect them to learn to handle stakeholders as well as code. I'd expect them to be exposed to many different vendors and tech stacks. But mostly I'd expect them to get really good at making a big impact very quickly, with limited time and people. When I compare that to a guy getting paid $1 million a year to run a team of 4 people who build youtube revenue dashboards or something, adding one graph a month, I know who would want working on project I cared about. The WITCH engineer was just unwise enough to be born in India right? Probably went to the top schools there, has an MBA and a masters in compsci... Just... Indian, so worth less for some reason.
- thrownaway9 5y ago
  > "The WITCH engineer was just unwise enough to be born in India right? Probably went to the top schools there, has an MBA and a masters in compsci... Just... Indian, so worth less for some reason." The comparison is between FAANG FTE and WITCH contractor. This isn't to do with nationality or birthplace. There are many Indian FAANG FTEs just as there are many American and European WITCH contractors.
  - chihuahua 5y ago
    And indeed I have worked with many outstanding FTE engineers at 3 FAAMG companies who were born in India, and are very highly paid. I also worked with some good WITCH contractors at those same companies.

Anyone who has worked with "WITCH" knows there is no comparison here. WITCH operates at high scale, low cost, low skill, low quality contractors. They cannot be compared to full time FAANG engineers.

mrsuprawsm 5y ago

That was the purpose of the parent article's assertion, to illustrate that same point.

shubb 5y ago

I see threads elsewhere full of "I joined a FANG hoping to make amazing algorithms and push computer science forward but I'm just building dashboards and changing button colours", so I'm not 100% sure the work content is different. In 5 years, I'd expect a WITCH engineer to be exposed to and deeply understand many industries and companies. I'd expect them to learn to handle stakeholders as well as code. I'd expect them to be exposed to many different vendors and tech stacks. But mostly I'd expect them to get really good at making a big impact very quickly, with limited time and people. When I compare that to a guy getting paid $1 million a year to run a team of 4 people who build youtube revenue dashboards or something, adding one graph a month, I know who would want working on project I cared about. The WITCH engineer was just unwise enough to be born in India right? Probably went to the top schools there, has an MBA and a masters in compsci... Just... Indian, so worth less for some reason.

thrownaway9 5y ago
> "The WITCH engineer was just unwise enough to be born in India right? Probably went to the top schools there, has an MBA and a masters in compsci... Just... Indian, so worth less for some reason." The comparison is between FAANG FTE and WITCH contractor. This isn't to do with nationality or birthplace. There are many Indian FAANG FTEs just as there are many American and European WITCH contractors.
- chihuahua 5y ago
  And indeed I have worked with many outstanding FTE engineers at 3 FAAMG companies who were born in India, and are very highly paid. I also worked with some good WITCH contractors at those same companies.