1. In a start-up, you being good at what you do is what separates the company failing from it succeeding. In FAANG, none of what you do matters. There are thous

1. In a start-up, you being good at what you do is what separates the company failing from it succeeding. In FAANG, none of what you do matters. There are thousands of initiatives and redundancies. 2. Highly standardized is exactly what leads to politics. Everyone's circumstances are different but somehow you need to fit everything to the same ill-fitted mold, so everyone is trying to exploit the game. The standardized interview is also the worse thing about Google/Facebook leading to dumbing things down, lack of purpose, and bad targeting of specialized skills. At least Google is backtracking from it. 3. A small company has vision and enables a few people to have genuine impact, this is what leads to doing something different and innovating. Those few people in power are stubborn, they need to. You don't innovate through design by committee. If you don't like the vision you shouldn't have joined that company.