7 ms·

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

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.
- ablatt89 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - dijit 4y ago
    Honestly this defensiveness is quite unpleasant. Google's interview process requires two things: 1) That you're compliant 2) That you study. Smart people can get by this filter, as long as they're compliant with less studying. Average people can get by this with more studying. Even if you're smart, you will be studying. "Rockstars" can't get by this filter, which is probably the intent of the interview more than finding amazing engineers. I think it's possible that you've attached a certain weight to illustriousness of FAANG, but it's an open conversation outside of FAANG that it's not hard for an engineer of 8-10y to get a job there, the question usually becomes: "Why would you want to". As soon as you get to a certain level in tech, your primary financial needs are met completely and you start to see the shiny veneer of FAANG wearing off. A lot of what makes them seem competent from the outside is the sheer volume of staff, 100k people can make a LOT of shiny documents and good ideas (the borg paper has definitely made me think of working there). The veneer falls of Facebook first "Ew, they're scooping up all that data, gross!" Then Amazon: "They treat people like slaves and everyone I know Ex-Amazon is a burnout" Then Google: "Everything that isn't ad-tech is a toy, sure, they're rich but you live in a massive bubble.. also "Googliness" makes it sound like a cult" For all of these you have the implicit knowledge that you're going to be a tiny cog and overall the bureaucracy will be insane. Anyone who has pulled back the curtain on these companies knows that while the comp is good, the engineers aren't extraordinary just because they work there or work on "x scale problems". In fact, most Google engineers taken out of Google are fucking useless, because they've developed a body of knowledge built entirely on systems that do not exist on the outside, many of which were developed many years ago to make hard problems simpler.
    - ablatt89 4y ago
      Why is the defensiveness "unpleasant" when you're the one calling engineers incompetent because they work for FAANG? I quote you: > In fact, most Google engineers taken out of Google are fucking useless, because they've developed a body of knowledge built entirely on systems that do not exist on the outside, many of which were developed many years ago to make hard problems simpler. > Who is making this unpleasant? You critique a body of engineers, using biased personal anecdotes and no hard metrics, and think I am the one being negative and unpleasant? Insane.
      - dijit 4y ago
        Ok, let's break it down because if you're working for FAANG (and this is why you're defensive) then I think you're making your own case here, by not understanding what people are saying. 1) I said that hiring has less to do about intelligence than compliance (which is what the parent was saying). Do intelligent people work there? absolutely. Does working for FAANG mean you are intelligent? No. This is the distinction in which you seem to be confused. The interview process does not mean that everyone working in Google is smarter than anyone else, it just means (and in no uncertain terms) that you were willing to jump through hoops. 2) I stated that there are skills you learn inside google which are not relevant outside. Google themselves know this, it's part of why their literature is littered with "in a google context" or "a problem exclusive to google's way of working". For example: Piper, a centralised source code storage system is not available outside Google. Everyone uses Git, or, in the games industry they use Perforce (and you will quickly learn if you work in this context that the lush SCM tools that you're used to don't exist, there might be 1 person looking after perforce for an entire studio of 1,500 people -- if you are extremely lucky). Blaze, the build tool which was open sourced as Bazel: Does not make sense to most engineering orgs and has very low penetration in the real world. Monarch (and its query language) are exclusive to google. Borg, has no corollary, Kubernetes is both completely different (borrowing a few ideas) and less mature at running most kinds of workloads. You would have to re-learn this. The statement: "knowledge of these tools is not helpful outside" is absolutely correct. Maybe there are some ideas that if you had 5 years to redesign you could build something. Similarly though, if you took a person from today and sent them 100 years into the past and they described a smart-phone.... well, you're no closer to actually having a smart phone. I'm simply saying that most ex-Google employees will have to learn the tools used on the outside. In some cases they're going to be annoyed at not having certain conveniences.
- Upgrayyed_U 4y ago
  Not sure if it helps, but this is exactly how I read your earlier comment. I still don't quite understand the defensiveness coming from some of the responses.
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago
  Do you go around giving IQ tests as soon as someone gets into FAANG? Love how you keep reiterating something is a fact without zero evidence.
  - adam_arthur 4y ago
    If plenty of average talent people get hired at FAANG (they do, from a statistically reasonably sized sample). Then being above average talent is not a minimum requirement for joining FAANG. The fact that is being considered a controversial statement is truly mind boggling to me.
    - ablatt89 4y ago
      That logic is not sound. If there's some selection criteria to select engineers from the general populace S, and a subset engineers who make it past S are average, that doesn't mea the end distribution of IQs (you're the one who brought up IQs) of FAANG engineers vs the distribution of IQs of the general SWE population would match in statistics. That is, large statistics don't just match because some subset of the populations match at some level. It's a clear misunderstanding of statistics and sloppy logic. It's pretty absurd that you continue to think you're somehow making a logical argument and somehow think your IQ is above 120.
      - adam_arthur 4y ago
        The logic is sound. > "The minimum threshold to get hired for FAANG is ~average talent and the willingness to grind" > "Some average talent people work for FAANG" > Thus, somebody who is average can get hired by FAANG I said absolutely nothing about the skill distribution or histogram of talent across all of FAANG engineering. Anybody who's worked in the Bay Area has known a number of untalented people who have joined FAANG. That's reality. Believe whatever you want. That an untalented person can join FAANG does not say anything about the talent of the FAANG engineer on average. An interview process threshold defines the left tail of the skill distributions of the hires, and tells you nothing about the shape of the distribution beyond that. Though you can likely assume it's normally distributed. How many ways do I need to slice it for you?
- joshuamorton 4y ago
  While I don't entirely agree with your claim, the claim being responded to here is not what you said and opens with "Statistically, FAANG workers are not good engineers". So the reason people are replying to a statement that you didn't make is because someone else did.
  - ablatt89 4y ago
    Don't be pedantic, that was absolutely the intent of Arthur's post. Re-read it. He clearly insults FAAANG engineers as incompetent, then follows with FAANG engineers are just average in intelligence and grind. You're being dishonest if you think that's not meant as an insult.
    - joshuamorton 4y ago
      Perhaps, but I choose to read his first post as saying that the startup he works for isn't capable of giving some people a successful environment, which is often true. Broadly, I see no need to prove myself, if I choose to change employers I'll be fine. The other thing, of course, is that small companies can afford to be extremely judicious in a way that G/M can't (for example the old thing where Netflix only hired staff-equivalents). But I ultimately agree with you (like I said!) that at that point you're basically saying Google and Microsoft contain the below average engineers only from the index of current-and-former faang employees, which is sort of trivially true. As for grind, idk I think it's good that my coworkers are below average grind. I am too. Wlb is good. Grind is unhealthy.
pjmlp 4y ago
My experience looking at the quality of Android tooling raises some questions about those skills.
- hulitu 4y ago
  My experience is the same. Could be " good engineers" and "bad management" but this would not explain why the " good engineers" would work for "bad management".
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  Isn't the Android tooling mostly Gradle and IntelliJ though, which Google don't make.
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    If only. At least I'd only have to master Gradle's batshit insane logic. But no, between the Android Gradle Plugin which is clearly the work of a tortured soul, various tools like aapt, the Android API changes (lol MediaStore, lol version & extension checks), some tools in Android Studio which have been terrible for a while, there's a lot of bad stuff coming from Google. But then again none of this is as painful as using Xcode so I can't really complain.

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.

ablatt89 4y ago
[flagged]
- dijit 4y ago
  Honestly this defensiveness is quite unpleasant. Google's interview process requires two things: 1) That you're compliant 2) That you study. Smart people can get by this filter, as long as they're compliant with less studying. Average people can get by this with more studying. Even if you're smart, you will be studying. "Rockstars" can't get by this filter, which is probably the intent of the interview more than finding amazing engineers. I think it's possible that you've attached a certain weight to illustriousness of FAANG, but it's an open conversation outside of FAANG that it's not hard for an engineer of 8-10y to get a job there, the question usually becomes: "Why would you want to". As soon as you get to a certain level in tech, your primary financial needs are met completely and you start to see the shiny veneer of FAANG wearing off. A lot of what makes them seem competent from the outside is the sheer volume of staff, 100k people can make a LOT of shiny documents and good ideas (the borg paper has definitely made me think of working there). The veneer falls of Facebook first "Ew, they're scooping up all that data, gross!" Then Amazon: "They treat people like slaves and everyone I know Ex-Amazon is a burnout" Then Google: "Everything that isn't ad-tech is a toy, sure, they're rich but you live in a massive bubble.. also "Googliness" makes it sound like a cult" For all of these you have the implicit knowledge that you're going to be a tiny cog and overall the bureaucracy will be insane. Anyone who has pulled back the curtain on these companies knows that while the comp is good, the engineers aren't extraordinary just because they work there or work on "x scale problems". In fact, most Google engineers taken out of Google are fucking useless, because they've developed a body of knowledge built entirely on systems that do not exist on the outside, many of which were developed many years ago to make hard problems simpler.
  - ablatt89 4y ago
    Why is the defensiveness "unpleasant" when you're the one calling engineers incompetent because they work for FAANG? I quote you: > In fact, most Google engineers taken out of Google are fucking useless, because they've developed a body of knowledge built entirely on systems that do not exist on the outside, many of which were developed many years ago to make hard problems simpler. > Who is making this unpleasant? You critique a body of engineers, using biased personal anecdotes and no hard metrics, and think I am the one being negative and unpleasant? Insane.
    - dijit 4y ago
      Ok, let's break it down because if you're working for FAANG (and this is why you're defensive) then I think you're making your own case here, by not understanding what people are saying. 1) I said that hiring has less to do about intelligence than compliance (which is what the parent was saying). Do intelligent people work there? absolutely. Does working for FAANG mean you are intelligent? No. This is the distinction in which you seem to be confused. The interview process does not mean that everyone working in Google is smarter than anyone else, it just means (and in no uncertain terms) that you were willing to jump through hoops. 2) I stated that there are skills you learn inside google which are not relevant outside. Google themselves know this, it's part of why their literature is littered with "in a google context" or "a problem exclusive to google's way of working". For example: Piper, a centralised source code storage system is not available outside Google. Everyone uses Git, or, in the games industry they use Perforce (and you will quickly learn if you work in this context that the lush SCM tools that you're used to don't exist, there might be 1 person looking after perforce for an entire studio of 1,500 people -- if you are extremely lucky). Blaze, the build tool which was open sourced as Bazel: Does not make sense to most engineering orgs and has very low penetration in the real world. Monarch (and its query language) are exclusive to google. Borg, has no corollary, Kubernetes is both completely different (borrowing a few ideas) and less mature at running most kinds of workloads. You would have to re-learn this. The statement: "knowledge of these tools is not helpful outside" is absolutely correct. Maybe there are some ideas that if you had 5 years to redesign you could build something. Similarly though, if you took a person from today and sent them 100 years into the past and they described a smart-phone.... well, you're no closer to actually having a smart phone. I'm simply saying that most ex-Google employees will have to learn the tools used on the outside. In some cases they're going to be annoyed at not having certain conveniences.
Upgrayyed_U 4y ago
Not sure if it helps, but this is exactly how I read your earlier comment. I still don't quite understand the defensiveness coming from some of the responses.
cscurmudgeon 4y ago
Do you go around giving IQ tests as soon as someone gets into FAANG? Love how you keep reiterating something is a fact without zero evidence.
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  If plenty of average talent people get hired at FAANG (they do, from a statistically reasonably sized sample). Then being above average talent is not a minimum requirement for joining FAANG. The fact that is being considered a controversial statement is truly mind boggling to me.
  - ablatt89 4y ago
    That logic is not sound. If there's some selection criteria to select engineers from the general populace S, and a subset engineers who make it past S are average, that doesn't mea the end distribution of IQs (you're the one who brought up IQs) of FAANG engineers vs the distribution of IQs of the general SWE population would match in statistics. That is, large statistics don't just match because some subset of the populations match at some level. It's a clear misunderstanding of statistics and sloppy logic. It's pretty absurd that you continue to think you're somehow making a logical argument and somehow think your IQ is above 120.
    - adam_arthur 4y ago
      The logic is sound. > "The minimum threshold to get hired for FAANG is ~average talent and the willingness to grind" > "Some average talent people work for FAANG" > Thus, somebody who is average can get hired by FAANG I said absolutely nothing about the skill distribution or histogram of talent across all of FAANG engineering. Anybody who's worked in the Bay Area has known a number of untalented people who have joined FAANG. That's reality. Believe whatever you want. That an untalented person can join FAANG does not say anything about the talent of the FAANG engineer on average. An interview process threshold defines the left tail of the skill distributions of the hires, and tells you nothing about the shape of the distribution beyond that. Though you can likely assume it's normally distributed. How many ways do I need to slice it for you?
joshuamorton 4y ago
While I don't entirely agree with your claim, the claim being responded to here is not what you said and opens with "Statistically, FAANG workers are not good engineers". So the reason people are replying to a statement that you didn't make is because someone else did.
- ablatt89 4y ago
  Don't be pedantic, that was absolutely the intent of Arthur's post. Re-read it. He clearly insults FAAANG engineers as incompetent, then follows with FAANG engineers are just average in intelligence and grind. You're being dishonest if you think that's not meant as an insult.
  - joshuamorton 4y ago
    Perhaps, but I choose to read his first post as saying that the startup he works for isn't capable of giving some people a successful environment, which is often true. Broadly, I see no need to prove myself, if I choose to change employers I'll be fine. The other thing, of course, is that small companies can afford to be extremely judicious in a way that G/M can't (for example the old thing where Netflix only hired staff-equivalents). But I ultimately agree with you (like I said!) that at that point you're basically saying Google and Microsoft contain the below average engineers only from the index of current-and-former faang employees, which is sort of trivially true. As for grind, idk I think it's good that my coworkers are below average grind. I am too. Wlb is good. Grind is unhealthy.

pjmlp 4y ago

My experience looking at the quality of Android tooling raises some questions about those skills.

hulitu 4y ago
My experience is the same. Could be " good engineers" and "bad management" but this would not explain why the " good engineers" would work for "bad management".
fidgewidge 4y ago
Isn't the Android tooling mostly Gradle and IntelliJ though, which Google don't make.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  If only. At least I'd only have to master Gradle's batshit insane logic. But no, between the Android Gradle Plugin which is clearly the work of a tortured soul, various tools like aapt, the Android API changes (lol MediaStore, lol version & extension checks), some tools in Android Studio which have been terrible for a while, there's a lot of bad stuff coming from Google. But then again none of this is as painful as using Xcode so I can't really complain.