1. Note that this is a news aggregator for tech startups. Tech startups in large cities tend to hire most of their experienced engineers from FAANG companies. So, it's in a tech startup's interest to critique FAANGs.
2. You could want to be a great startup founder or early engineer as an ambition. Probabilistically, your most straightforward path to this goal is to go to a FAANG next. Golden handcuffs, most people come in with this ambition then don't leave because there's so many pleasant aspects. Think about point #1 again.
3. If you are trying to get into a more respected tech community and are limited by visa issues, which companies tend to solve more often than individuals, it's probably in your interest to find a company [1] that will clear this hurtle for you and [2] that has a brand you can leverage. FAANG is a subset of companies that would provide that option.Ask HN: What did you think about working at a FAANG?
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Re: Ask HN: What did you think about working at a FAANG?
#12The way it was once explained to me: there are three broad skills that are relevant to succeeding at a FAANG: A) Technical brilliance/mastery B) Willingness to grind/endure C) Political savvy/ruthlessness/schmoozing Any combination of two of these is sufficient to progress in you career. All three is even better. I’ve met A+B’s, B+C’s and A+C’s and they all do pretty well. If you just have one of these, you’re not go…
at big corporations (not bay area) i’d say brilliance is worth zero because the playbook mgmt is running is to basically cargo cult what more successful companies are visibly doing. AWS worked for X leader in space? sheep follow. creativity and individual thought is punished
Re: Ask HN: What did you think about working at a FAANG?
#13FWIW I did not feel like everyone was super smart at my FAANG job. I didn't even feel that anyone was particularly curious. Obviously, YMMV depending on the company and the team.
Re: Ask HN: What did you think about working at a FAANG?
#141. Note that this is a news aggregator for tech startups. Tech startups in large cities tend to hire most of their experienced engineers from FAANG companies. So, it's in a tech startup's interest to critique FAANGs. 2. You could want to be a great startup founder or early engineer as an ambition. Probabilistically, your most straightforward path to this goal is to go to a FAANG next. Golden handcuffs, most people co…
Indeed.
For example my experience with big corpos was totally different from what I've been reading on the internet.
Re: Ask HN: What did you think about working at a FAANG?
#15It sucked. Constant gaming for perceived power by people who have been the smartest one in the room all their lives. Empathy occasionally happens, but it tends to get squashed. A lot, well pretty much everything, depends on the teams and projects you get directly involved with.
Re: Ask HN: What did you think about working at a FAANG?
#16If you are not fully on-board with the latest current tenets of wokeism (keeping up with this is itself a full-time job), and the cancel culture it creates (remember, the slightest slight is cause for you to get cancelled!), then you should avoid ever even considering working for any FAANG (or many other large) "tech" (really advertising) companies.
You WILL comply with the group-think, or you will be eliminated. Independent thought or differences of opinion are simply not permitted. They pay well, but that's what it takes to make people put up with the miserably hostile work environments they create (rah-rah "we're such a great place to work!" programs only go so far....)
Re: Ask HN: What did you think about working at a FAANG?
#17If you are not fully on-board with the latest current tenets of wokeism (keeping up with this is itself a full-time job), and the cancel culture it creates (remember, the slightest slight is cause for you to get cancelled!), then you should avoid ever even considering working for any FAANG (or many other large) "tech" (really advertising) companies. You WILL comply with the group-think, or you will be eliminated. Ind…
In other words, you had opinions outside your job description, and couldn't be a professional and keep them to yourself. It comes as a shock to some people that a corporation is not a democracy, and that yes, that applies to THEM.
We all need to know what we are being paid to do and just keep our mouths shut about things outside of the area that we're being paid for.
Re: Ask HN: What did you think about working at a FAANG?
#18I was a SWE at google for a few years around 2013. I totally recommend the experience to anyone.
I left to join a small startup founded by friends, another experience I'd recommend to anyone.
In particular, I learned a ton. My prior job was a startup with a totally green team. At google, I found my team incredibly bright and motivated which was contagious -- You want to work hard an succeed because everyone else does. I can't speak to how this works for other teams.
I learned a ton about proper engineering, I got to see a larger, more well-written, more well-tested than I'll see in a long time. While I don't work with large-scale distributed systems written by thousands of people today, some of the lessons transfer.
For me, just access to the tribal knowledge was the most useful -- I was not an SRE but learned a lot about incident response by going to talks and reading threads. Seeing what is possible and what others have done is very inspiring.
I can't speak to FAAN or how G is today, but I'd recommend working there in 2013.
You certainly have less of an impact at such a huge company compared to a startup, but I've also found medium-sized companies to have that same blunting of impact, without any of the benefits.
Re: Ask HN: What did you think about working at a FAANG?
#19If you are not fully on-board with the latest current tenets of wokeism (keeping up with this is itself a full-time job), and the cancel culture it creates (remember, the slightest slight is cause for you to get cancelled!), then you should avoid ever even considering working for any FAANG (or many other large) "tech" (really advertising) companies. You WILL comply with the group-think, or you will be eliminated. Ind…
In other words, you had opinions outside your job description, and couldn't be a professional and keep them to yourself. It comes as a shock to some people that a corporation is not a democracy, and that yes, that applies to THEM. We all need to know what we are being paid to do and just keep our mouths shut about things outside of the area that we're being paid for.
If work is neutral ground, one might argue then, that all personal (political) opinions should be kept private and not discussed in the work place. Regardless of if they are left or right leaning …
Re: Ask HN: What did you think about working at a FAANG?
#20I strongly recommend working for a FAANG. Even a few years are going to give you lasting benefits:
- You make significantly more money at a FAANG than most of the rest of the industry
- The klout of a FAANG on your resume will open a lot of doors to more interesting, higher paying, or more prestigious jobs
- You will gain a professional network that will be useful for the entire rest of your career
- Most SWE teams at any FAANG are using state-of-the-art tech, tooling, and patterns, which will be very useful experience to draw from in future jobs, even if not applied in exactly the same way
There's plenty of downsides to working at a FAANG, which every blog post can tell you. But in my experience those downsides are exaggerated and it's rarely so intolerable you can't last at least a few years.
So even if you have a terrible time, those lasting benefits are worth a lot of trouble. It could be a life-changing career move, and if you hate it, you can always quit whenever you want.
A relevant Dan Luu post: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/