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> After leaving Meta recently That's all I needed to hear. Back in the day, the college you went to opened (or shut) doors to get interviews. And most people,

> After leaving Meta recently That's all I needed to hear. Back in the day, the college you went to opened (or shut) doors to get interviews. And most people, who did not attend an Ivy League school or similar, rejected the concept as being anti-meritocratic. However, today, it's the same thing -- just replace college with the company(ies) you list on your resume. A shitty programmer with a bad attitude from Meta, Google, etc. is far more likely to get opportunities than the best programmer in the entire insurance industry, or the person who wrote the greatest dry-cleaner management software. It's quite unfortunate.

dan-robertson 4y ago
Would the person who wrote the best dry-cleaner management software do well at a company like Google? That is, I think a lot of the required skills there are ‘getting things done in a company the size of Google’ and having worked at Meta for a few years is perhaps a better signal for that than having made some great software. Likewise someone from Google may have a harder time in some startup where the structure is different and they don’t have all the fancy google tools or services. To be clear, I don’t want to imply that someone who makes great dry cleaner management software is a bad programmer or that they couldn’t be successful at Google or that Google look at the right signals and have good processes or that the startups who should have a different hiring strategy don’t copy google too much.
- listenallyall 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - j-bos 4y ago
    Your point can be made with more civility.
  - dan-robertson 4y ago
    Yeah, so one thing that is pretty naturally frustrating is that hiring processes are incredibly unfair in the sense that perceived quality of candidates by the process is often wildly unrelated to how they would perform at the job and, in particular, the processes often rate poorly many candidates who would make excellent hires. This unfairness does not feel good but I think it would be worse to require companies to be fair (likely their definition of fairness would be bad and processes would converge more meaning all companies were competing for exactly the same candidates) and it is reasonable for companies for these processes to be unfair as their goal is to hire N candidates who meet their bar, rather than to find all candidates who meet their bar and randomly select N of them. I do think it is bad for companies but I think it’s bad that the processes are ineffective (ie missing excellent candidates; overpaying for mid candidates due to competing with everyone else for the same people) rather than because they are unfair. One thing to note about the article is the person seems to have had some reasonable variation in interview process between companies. Perhaps if the hypothetical dry cleaner management software maker applied to a company that did work-sample tests, they would get a chance to shine by being good at programming and taking feedback and working on actual problems independently for example, even if they didn’t do a good job at passing the candidate screen or doing ‘algorithms’ at a more traditional company.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Dry cleaner app guy maybe but insurance guy for sure.
- osigurdson 4y ago
  >> don’t have all the fancy google tools or services Hard to believe that all of the fancy google tools haven't been replicated in open source yet. Software people love writing tools to make writing software easier - what's up?
  - ecshafer 4y ago
    I haven't worked at Google. But I think that the level of infrastructure at a larger Tech company really shouldn't be disregarded. I've worked in a small <10 person shop, a large non-tech finance co, and a tech co. One really big difference is that the internal tooling, infrastructure, etc. are really well polished at a larger tech focused company compared to non-tech and small places. Even if there are a lot of open source tools, which may even be used at tech companies, when you do not have a team(s) who work full time integrating all of these tools, the developer infrastructure, CICD, etc. it is a big pain. And at smaller non-tech companies, debugging all of this stuff that Just Works^tm is a really big part of the job.
    - shostack 4y ago
      Not to mention when there's a problem, especially a SEV, you have oncalls and entire teams of people rushing to fix it, giving trackable status updates, responding directly to you, etc. Compare that to posting on Stack Overflow and praying for a high quality response.
- listenallyall 4y ago
  > Would the person who wrote the best dry-cleaner management software do well at a company like Google? Offer them a job and find out. > the required skills there are ‘getting things done in a company the size of Google’ this sounds like a fake excuse to exclude someone who has demonstrated a high degree of ability and skill, but doesn't fit your mental image of what a Google employee should be -- otherwise known as gatekeeping
  - scarface74 4y ago
    I went from demonstrating a “high degree of ability and skill” that brought in an extra 1 million in revenue at a 60 person company over a year. It was lauded by CxOs. Doing the same type of work at AWS gets a congratulatory email and is just a drop in the bucket. I’ve also gone through interview training. We are specifically told not to consider where you got your experience or education from as long as you meet the standards. While they don’t bring me in for coding interviews, I’ve been on interview panels as part of the system design section. I know this to be true.
    - hef19898 4y ago
      That is something Amazon does got right, they look for the experience during interviews, for the skillset. And yes, they tend not to care that much about where that experience comes from.
  - BFLpL0QNek 4y ago
    > but doesn't fit your mental image of what a Google employee should be -- otherwise known as gatekeeping Otherwise known as “culture fit”? I say that sarcastically. Anywhere I see “culture interviews”, “our culture”, or “culture fit” I think it’s one of those bull shit jobs type things, and used as a get out clause in the hr tool box. For the big companies, culture fit often feels a bit cult like. It’s no longer a job to pay the bills even if you enjoy the work, instead you have to believe the company is changing the world, eat, sleep and live the company values etc etc.
- scarface74 4y ago
  It personally took me over a year to learn how to navigate BigTech after spending an entire 25 year career at small unknown companies. I came straight from a 60 person company to AWS. It wasn’t pretty and I was hired for a remote position during Covid
lurking_swe 4y ago
as someone who started their software career working at 3M of all places (shitty software practices) and slowly worked my way up to a tier-2 software company (just below faang) with a total comp of $200k+, don’t sell yourself short. Oh and i went to a state school, and also applied for these jobs directly online, no referrals. Where you start doesn’t matter if you are motivated and have some luck along the way. Yes the rich and smart have a head start, they are dealt better “cards” at birth. That’s true for EVERYTHING in life. That has nothing to do with software.
- gabereiser 4y ago
  With an attitude like that, you are richer than you realize.
  - lurking_swe 4y ago
    100%! I’m blessed to be in the position that I am. But everything is relative. Some of my colleagues have it so much easier than me, because they went to school at Berkeley, etc. Started off their careers directly at a tier 2 company as interns! Got those sweet RSU’s at 22 years old. The goal of my reply was to encourage others and make them believe they can do it too. I endured some hardships on my journey (no connections to the tech industry, went to an average state school, etc). Others will be enduring much more, and i acknowledge that.
    - gabereiser 4y ago
      You're right, some of us couldn't afford college and so went into tech because back then it didn't require a degree. Worked their way up from a call center to web and software development. Learn some stuff along the way and release a game for the xbox 360 all while maintaining that career they worked so hard to build, only now they are a Director within the industry teaching others and directing others on how to build planet-scale data lakes and distributed systems. :D It's not about money (though we think it is when we start), it's about fulfillment and doing what you love.
    - adave 4y ago
dyno12345 4y ago
the skills you learn in Big Tech are somewhat distinct from what you are taught in CS 102: modern distributed systems engineering and cooperating within a giant org. The Ivy League filter feels and kind of is unfair, but for new grads it's really really difficult to find good signals and big tech gets two or three orders of magnitude more applicants than open positions.
lr4444lr 4y ago
This is true, but I think you have the reason misconstrued: it isn't that working at a FAANG on your resume provides a signal of greatness, it's that it guarantees a reliable floor competency. The recruiter is concerned with making her quota just as much as finding rock stars, if not more, and ex FAANG candidates probably stand a higher chance of making it through the interview funnel on average.
- nnurmanov 4y ago
  I once asked recruiters how many candidates they review before they hire a senior engineer. Some answered 200! So the fact you worked in FAANG is not a reason to reject, at least not on recruiter’s level.
- listenallyall 4y ago
  > you have the reason misconstrued I don't believe my post suggested any reasons. > it guarantees a reliable floor competency I disagree. FAANG experience only demonstrates that, at one point, somebody believed you could do the job. There are dead-weight employees at FAANGs (and everywhere of course) who don't really have much competency (or perhaps one very specific competency that's only valuable in that specific role at that specific company, and virtually nothing else). There are also people who were once terrific, but have burned out, turned focus towards their family, were amazing at some obsolete tool/language, etc, started (or stopped) using drugs regularly, etc I do agree that recruiters are not looking for rockstars but just anyone to fill a spot.
  - shostack 4y ago
    Why do you view focusing on one's family as a negative? You can still do excellent work and focus on your family. If by that you mean "won't be willing to be exploited by working 70hr weeks and weekends" then that's a whole different conversation.
    - deleted 4y ago
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  - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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jxjsnaoabs 4y ago
> A shitty programmer with a bad attitude from Meta, Google, etc. is far more likely to get opportunities than the best programmer in the entire insurance industry... First, even if this is true, are you seriously arguing that people with relevant work experience from biggest tech companies getting opportunities is anti-meritocratic? (And no one is just handing out jobs, they still have to do well at thr interview) Besides this even true? I personally know lots of people who in big tech that haven't previously worked at big tech. These companies hire tons of fresh grads out of college too, and not everyone is from ivy leagues, in fact from my experience, most are not.
scarface74 4y ago
I can’t speak for how it is in 2023. But in 2020, I had nothing but a long history as an “enterprise developer” at unknown companies writing C# CRUD apps and I had every tech company reaching out to me. It really didn’t matter where you work if you could pass the DS&A monkey dance interview, you could get a job at most of the tech companies. I did a slight pivot to fall into BigTech. So I didn’t have to.
comprev 4y ago
One could argue that being at FAANG provides far more income than 95% of other tech jobs, so OP might have a significantly larger financial cushion before they need to worry about the next paycheque. This alone excludes most people from quitting first with nothing lined up.
jsemrau 4y ago
I single-handedly wrote a custom inventory management system for a Japanese mobility-industry service provider that's in operation for 15+ years. ...crickets.

dan-robertson 4y ago

Would the person who wrote the best dry-cleaner management software do well at a company like Google? That is, I think a lot of the required skills there are ‘getting things done in a company the size of Google’ and having worked at Meta for a few years is perhaps a better signal for that than having made some great software. Likewise someone from Google may have a harder time in some startup where the structure is different and they don’t have all the fancy google tools or services. To be clear, I don’t want to imply that someone who makes great dry cleaner management software is a bad programmer or that they couldn’t be successful at Google or that Google look at the right signals and have good processes or that the startups who should have a different hiring strategy don’t copy google too much.

listenallyall 4y ago
[flagged]
- j-bos 4y ago
  Your point can be made with more civility.
- dan-robertson 4y ago
  Yeah, so one thing that is pretty naturally frustrating is that hiring processes are incredibly unfair in the sense that perceived quality of candidates by the process is often wildly unrelated to how they would perform at the job and, in particular, the processes often rate poorly many candidates who would make excellent hires. This unfairness does not feel good but I think it would be worse to require companies to be fair (likely their definition of fairness would be bad and processes would converge more meaning all companies were competing for exactly the same candidates) and it is reasonable for companies for these processes to be unfair as their goal is to hire N candidates who meet their bar, rather than to find all candidates who meet their bar and randomly select N of them. I do think it is bad for companies but I think it’s bad that the processes are ineffective (ie missing excellent candidates; overpaying for mid candidates due to competing with everyone else for the same people) rather than because they are unfair. One thing to note about the article is the person seems to have had some reasonable variation in interview process between companies. Perhaps if the hypothetical dry cleaner management software maker applied to a company that did work-sample tests, they would get a chance to shine by being good at programming and taking feedback and working on actual problems independently for example, even if they didn’t do a good job at passing the candidate screen or doing ‘algorithms’ at a more traditional company.
ipaddr 4y ago
Dry cleaner app guy maybe but insurance guy for sure.
osigurdson 4y ago
>> don’t have all the fancy google tools or services Hard to believe that all of the fancy google tools haven't been replicated in open source yet. Software people love writing tools to make writing software easier - what's up?
- ecshafer 4y ago
  I haven't worked at Google. But I think that the level of infrastructure at a larger Tech company really shouldn't be disregarded. I've worked in a small <10 person shop, a large non-tech finance co, and a tech co. One really big difference is that the internal tooling, infrastructure, etc. are really well polished at a larger tech focused company compared to non-tech and small places. Even if there are a lot of open source tools, which may even be used at tech companies, when you do not have a team(s) who work full time integrating all of these tools, the developer infrastructure, CICD, etc. it is a big pain. And at smaller non-tech companies, debugging all of this stuff that Just Works^tm is a really big part of the job.
  - shostack 4y ago
    Not to mention when there's a problem, especially a SEV, you have oncalls and entire teams of people rushing to fix it, giving trackable status updates, responding directly to you, etc. Compare that to posting on Stack Overflow and praying for a high quality response.
listenallyall 4y ago
> Would the person who wrote the best dry-cleaner management software do well at a company like Google? Offer them a job and find out. > the required skills there are ‘getting things done in a company the size of Google’ this sounds like a fake excuse to exclude someone who has demonstrated a high degree of ability and skill, but doesn't fit your mental image of what a Google employee should be -- otherwise known as gatekeeping
- scarface74 4y ago
  I went from demonstrating a “high degree of ability and skill” that brought in an extra 1 million in revenue at a 60 person company over a year. It was lauded by CxOs. Doing the same type of work at AWS gets a congratulatory email and is just a drop in the bucket. I’ve also gone through interview training. We are specifically told not to consider where you got your experience or education from as long as you meet the standards. While they don’t bring me in for coding interviews, I’ve been on interview panels as part of the system design section. I know this to be true.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    That is something Amazon does got right, they look for the experience during interviews, for the skillset. And yes, they tend not to care that much about where that experience comes from.
- BFLpL0QNek 4y ago
  > but doesn't fit your mental image of what a Google employee should be -- otherwise known as gatekeeping Otherwise known as “culture fit”? I say that sarcastically. Anywhere I see “culture interviews”, “our culture”, or “culture fit” I think it’s one of those bull shit jobs type things, and used as a get out clause in the hr tool box. For the big companies, culture fit often feels a bit cult like. It’s no longer a job to pay the bills even if you enjoy the work, instead you have to believe the company is changing the world, eat, sleep and live the company values etc etc.
scarface74 4y ago
It personally took me over a year to learn how to navigate BigTech after spending an entire 25 year career at small unknown companies. I came straight from a 60 person company to AWS. It wasn’t pretty and I was hired for a remote position during Covid

lurking_swe 4y ago

as someone who started their software career working at 3M of all places (shitty software practices) and slowly worked my way up to a tier-2 software company (just below faang) with a total comp of $200k+, don’t sell yourself short. Oh and i went to a state school, and also applied for these jobs directly online, no referrals. Where you start doesn’t matter if you are motivated and have some luck along the way. Yes the rich and smart have a head start, they are dealt better “cards” at birth. That’s true for EVERYTHING in life. That has nothing to do with software.

gabereiser 4y ago
With an attitude like that, you are richer than you realize.
- lurking_swe 4y ago
  100%! I’m blessed to be in the position that I am. But everything is relative. Some of my colleagues have it so much easier than me, because they went to school at Berkeley, etc. Started off their careers directly at a tier 2 company as interns! Got those sweet RSU’s at 22 years old. The goal of my reply was to encourage others and make them believe they can do it too. I endured some hardships on my journey (no connections to the tech industry, went to an average state school, etc). Others will be enduring much more, and i acknowledge that.
  - gabereiser 4y ago
    You're right, some of us couldn't afford college and so went into tech because back then it didn't require a degree. Worked their way up from a call center to web and software development. Learn some stuff along the way and release a game for the xbox 360 all while maintaining that career they worked so hard to build, only now they are a Director within the industry teaching others and directing others on how to build planet-scale data lakes and distributed systems. :D It's not about money (though we think it is when we start), it's about fulfillment and doing what you love.
  - adave 4y ago

dyno12345 4y ago

the skills you learn in Big Tech are somewhat distinct from what you are taught in CS 102: modern distributed systems engineering and cooperating within a giant org. The Ivy League filter feels and kind of is unfair, but for new grads it's really really difficult to find good signals and big tech gets two or three orders of magnitude more applicants than open positions.

lr4444lr 4y ago

This is true, but I think you have the reason misconstrued: it isn't that working at a FAANG on your resume provides a signal of greatness, it's that it guarantees a reliable floor competency. The recruiter is concerned with making her quota just as much as finding rock stars, if not more, and ex FAANG candidates probably stand a higher chance of making it through the interview funnel on average.

nnurmanov 4y ago
I once asked recruiters how many candidates they review before they hire a senior engineer. Some answered 200! So the fact you worked in FAANG is not a reason to reject, at least not on recruiter’s level.
listenallyall 4y ago
> you have the reason misconstrued I don't believe my post suggested any reasons. > it guarantees a reliable floor competency I disagree. FAANG experience only demonstrates that, at one point, somebody believed you could do the job. There are dead-weight employees at FAANGs (and everywhere of course) who don't really have much competency (or perhaps one very specific competency that's only valuable in that specific role at that specific company, and virtually nothing else). There are also people who were once terrific, but have burned out, turned focus towards their family, were amazing at some obsolete tool/language, etc, started (or stopped) using drugs regularly, etc I do agree that recruiters are not looking for rockstars but just anyone to fill a spot.
- shostack 4y ago
  Why do you view focusing on one's family as a negative? You can still do excellent work and focus on your family. If by that you mean "won't be willing to be exploited by working 70hr weeks and weekends" then that's a whole different conversation.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jxjsnaoabs 4y ago

> A shitty programmer with a bad attitude from Meta, Google, etc. is far more likely to get opportunities than the best programmer in the entire insurance industry... First, even if this is true, are you seriously arguing that people with relevant work experience from biggest tech companies getting opportunities is anti-meritocratic? (And no one is just handing out jobs, they still have to do well at thr interview) Besides this even true? I personally know lots of people who in big tech that haven't previously worked at big tech. These companies hire tons of fresh grads out of college too, and not everyone is from ivy leagues, in fact from my experience, most are not.

scarface74 4y ago

I can’t speak for how it is in 2023. But in 2020, I had nothing but a long history as an “enterprise developer” at unknown companies writing C# CRUD apps and I had every tech company reaching out to me. It really didn’t matter where you work if you could pass the DS&A monkey dance interview, you could get a job at most of the tech companies. I did a slight pivot to fall into BigTech. So I didn’t have to.

comprev 4y ago

One could argue that being at FAANG provides far more income than 95% of other tech jobs, so OP might have a significantly larger financial cushion before they need to worry about the next paycheque. This alone excludes most people from quitting first with nothing lined up.

jsemrau 4y ago

I single-handedly wrote a custom inventory management system for a Japanese mobility-industry service provider that's in operation for 15+ years. ...crickets.