Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful

I've worked for startups for 10 years and recently joined a FAANG company. Compensation and stability were part of my motivation, but the biggest reason was the assumption that I would be able to work with A+ players solving hard problems.

Instead, I'm on a team that has and horrendous turnover and is staffed with below-average IQ people.

This company builds EVERYTHING in house, and the toolset is like going backwards in my career 10 years.

If I do want to stick this out and turn this team around, I'm going to be working nights and weekends for at least a year - there's just too much to fix.

I've told this to lots of people who work in other division (that I can trust) and they've said the easiest thing is to just accept it as it is and coast. I've never done that in my career and don't think I could do that.

Has anyone been in the same boat? I'm told that it becomes easier to switch teams after a year.

I feel like I've made a terrible decision and don't know what to do next.

Any advice is appreciated.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

By all means raise these concerns and suggest improvements, but ultimately if a FAANG wants to waste its money and be stupid, let them be and enjoy part of that money. In a small startup where you have significant financial upside in it succeeding my advice would be different, but here just lay back and enjoy the paychecks.

Given your description of the team it seems like you should be able to outperform them without any trouble.

A job is a job. Quit if you don't like it, and stay if you think it's better than where you were before. If you can land a FAANG job, you can land a non-FAANG job too (with enough effort and time).

I have analogous experience working on projects/organizations that have experienced potential terminal neglect, though not at FAANGs. Probably I'd accept that your hours will be longer than acceptable, if that's a tradeoff you can handle. What you get in return is avoidance of the feeling that you spend all your time accomplishing nothing.

From there, it's building relationships, documenting what gets accomplished, and trying to meet people where they are so that they can maybe get something done (and not break other things.)

That's from a managing perspective, but if you are determined to not coast, that may be what you'll be doing.

Worry about your review. Everything else is secondary. Don’t try to turn the team around lol.