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I think you're insulting anyone who has worked for FAANG as someone who is not a good engineer, has an average IQ, and only got into the position via grinding.

I think you're insulting anyone who has worked for FAANG as someone who is not a good engineer, has an average IQ, and only got into the position via grinding. That's pretty disingenuous and not an honest assessment of the talent in FAANG and how most engineers DO want to work there. There's a lot of smart engineers who don't work for FAANG or will never work for FAANG, but your dismissal of engineers who work for FAANG as essentially bad engineers is completely wrong and insulting.

adam_arthur 4y ago
The fact that you interpret my statement of a required threshold to get hired as a blanket statement about the skill of all FAANG engineers is really something. What I said was self contained and factual, nothing more.
- ablatt89 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - adam_arthur 4y ago
    Yes, that's all you need. But that statement doesn't imply anything about the skills of the people, just the skills required to pass the interview. Great people can pass easy processes too. The fact that you would arbitrarily extrapolate my statement into something broader that I clearly didn't state implies to me that you're close to the bottom of that threshold. And I'm already wealthy and pseudo-retired after writing >million lines of code for a successfully exited startup, thanks. You do you.
    - ablatt89 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - neilv 4y ago
        Kids, stop fighting. It's the weekend. Go outside and play.
        ablatt89 4y ago
        Good idea, thanks :-)
irrational 4y ago
> most engineers DO want to work there. That hasn’t been my experience.
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago
  That’s point. Just because your experience differs doesn’t make it false.
  - throwifasd 4y ago
    [dead]
  - liamconnell 4y ago
    Well hold on now. Parent presented that as fact with no evidence too!
ohgodplsno 4y ago
Statistically, FAANG workers are not good engineers, mostly because Facebook and Google skews that by the sheer amount of people that they have. SWE at Google means you're good at interviewing, and that's it. There's a reason why Go was made, because, of of Rob Pike's own admission, most new devs at Google are dumbasses. There's all the half baked products, the dogshit APIs, all working on some internal ad software that runs in O(n^n^n) because who gives a shit, we're google, we have spares in our datacenter. The same applies to Facebook, that has hired up the wazoo and has basically led to a pass-the-interview culture. Passing the interview means you're good at remembering interview questions. I do have some praise for Netflix engineers, mostly because they remain a small-ish team with insane talent, and Apple and Amazon I can't really speak for. But just like every company, they have mediocre and average software developers. >most engineers DO want to work there In the past, maybe. Nowadays, you're in a pretty massive bubble if you see people still interested in joining fucking Meta. Although I guess $400k TC would make me question my morals too.
- ablatt89 4y ago
  Good engineers relative to what? You're conflating averages within a company, to averages in general to software engineers in the market. And you're basing this on the failures of a product without using some baseline. I agree that FAANG engineers aren't necessarily the geniuses they hype themselves out to be, but making broad assertions needs some baseline aside from personal experience as my personal experience with FAANG engineers has been mostly positive. That's not to say non-FAANG engineers aren't competent either, as I have worked with non-FAANG engineers as well and they were perfectly fine. The intent of the OP was simply to dismiss anyone working at FAANG and insinuate they were all subpar and average. He thinks you can just say "from my experience" and that just absolves him from any criticism of his statements. It's completely disingenous.
  - adam_arthur 4y ago
    I said the minimum threshold required to get hired is "~average talent and willingness to grind". This is a fact. This statement says nothing about the average skill of a FAANG engineer. The bizarre extrapolation of statement A to fabricated statement B is quite astounding. Truly.
hulitu 4y ago
> I think you're insulting anyone who has worked for FAANG as someone who is not a good engineer It does not matter how good an engineer you are when you produce crap. There are great engineers working for 3 letter agencies and the result of their work is people going to jail or getting killed because they are against the official narative. See Assange for example.
saurik 4y ago
As far as I read the comment, it is pushing back on the idea that people who work at these companies are all amazing, and does so by saying there exist under-performing people. You are at some other extreme, and so are trying to read the comment as saying "anyone who has worked for FAANG" is under-performing, which is so far off from what the comment you responded to is saying as to be a bit comical... maybe, defensive? ;P (edit: oh wow I just noticed your other flagged comments--which is why I hadn't seen them before replying here--and it is clear you are just being irrationally angry today.)
tjpnz 4y ago
>most engineers DO want to work there. How on earth did you come to that conclusion?

adam_arthur 4y ago

The fact that you interpret my statement of a required threshold to get hired as a blanket statement about the skill of all FAANG engineers is really something. What I said was self contained and factual, nothing more.

ablatt89 4y ago
[flagged]
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  Yes, that's all you need. But that statement doesn't imply anything about the skills of the people, just the skills required to pass the interview. Great people can pass easy processes too. The fact that you would arbitrarily extrapolate my statement into something broader that I clearly didn't state implies to me that you're close to the bottom of that threshold. And I'm already wealthy and pseudo-retired after writing >million lines of code for a successfully exited startup, thanks. You do you.
  - ablatt89 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - neilv 4y ago
      Kids, stop fighting. It's the weekend. Go outside and play.
      - ablatt89 4y ago
        Good idea, thanks :-)

irrational 4y ago

> most engineers DO want to work there. That hasn’t been my experience.

cscurmudgeon 4y ago
That’s point. Just because your experience differs doesn’t make it false.
- throwifasd 4y ago
  [dead]
- liamconnell 4y ago
  Well hold on now. Parent presented that as fact with no evidence too!

ohgodplsno 4y ago

Statistically, FAANG workers are not good engineers, mostly because Facebook and Google skews that by the sheer amount of people that they have. SWE at Google means you're good at interviewing, and that's it. There's a reason why Go was made, because, of of Rob Pike's own admission, most new devs at Google are dumbasses. There's all the half baked products, the dogshit APIs, all working on some internal ad software that runs in O(n^n^n) because who gives a shit, we're google, we have spares in our datacenter. The same applies to Facebook, that has hired up the wazoo and has basically led to a pass-the-interview culture. Passing the interview means you're good at remembering interview questions. I do have some praise for Netflix engineers, mostly because they remain a small-ish team with insane talent, and Apple and Amazon I can't really speak for. But just like every company, they have mediocre and average software developers. >most engineers DO want to work there In the past, maybe. Nowadays, you're in a pretty massive bubble if you see people still interested in joining fucking Meta. Although I guess $400k TC would make me question my morals too.

ablatt89 4y ago
Good engineers relative to what? You're conflating averages within a company, to averages in general to software engineers in the market. And you're basing this on the failures of a product without using some baseline. I agree that FAANG engineers aren't necessarily the geniuses they hype themselves out to be, but making broad assertions needs some baseline aside from personal experience as my personal experience with FAANG engineers has been mostly positive. That's not to say non-FAANG engineers aren't competent either, as I have worked with non-FAANG engineers as well and they were perfectly fine. The intent of the OP was simply to dismiss anyone working at FAANG and insinuate they were all subpar and average. He thinks you can just say "from my experience" and that just absolves him from any criticism of his statements. It's completely disingenous.
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  I said the minimum threshold required to get hired is "~average talent and willingness to grind". This is a fact. This statement says nothing about the average skill of a FAANG engineer. The bizarre extrapolation of statement A to fabricated statement B is quite astounding. Truly.

hulitu 4y ago

> I think you're insulting anyone who has worked for FAANG as someone who is not a good engineer It does not matter how good an engineer you are when you produce crap. There are great engineers working for 3 letter agencies and the result of their work is people going to jail or getting killed because they are against the official narative. See Assange for example.

saurik 4y ago

As far as I read the comment, it is pushing back on the idea that people who work at these companies are all amazing, and does so by saying there exist under-performing people. You are at some other extreme, and so are trying to read the comment as saying "anyone who has worked for FAANG" is under-performing, which is so far off from what the comment you responded to is saying as to be a bit comical... maybe, defensive? ;P (edit: oh wow I just noticed your other flagged comments--which is why I hadn't seen them before replying here--and it is clear you are just being irrationally angry today.)

tjpnz 4y ago

>most engineers DO want to work there. How on earth did you come to that conclusion?