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Ask HN: What are the downsides of working at FAANG?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the downsides of working at FAANG?

#21

Post by joshuamorton »

heurisko wrote: post #14
ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #7

I'm actually convinced that software engineering at FAANG > 95% of non FAANG software engineering roles. Its not just the compensation, the systems and infrastructure are nice to use. You don't spend nearly as much time mucking around with broken open source components.

> You don't spend nearly as much time mucking around with broken open source components. I was recently frustrated with a poor quality open sourced FAANG library. At one point the error message was something like "Successful: operation failed." There are also the cases where services are just built on open source components, then branded. I have much preferred working and integrating with open source components, as w…

The experience between "using a thing that a FAANG company threw over the wall to the OSS community" and "using a FAANG's developer infrastructure, which is staffed by a team of developers, as well as an on-call team with a 5-minute response time for large issues, and highly responsive mailing lists or chat rooms for individual issues or questions, and whose code is visible to most employees and accepts contributions when you find a bug or annoyance" is vast.

Re: Ask HN: What are the downsides of working at FAANG?

#22

Post by f0e4c2f7 »

It is difficult to get hired and people often find the interview process demoralizing.

It's also hard (possible, just hard work) to get promoted and usually not up to your boss. This isn't a downside exactly but it's different and can be frustrating.

There is a golden handcuff quality many people find where they don't care for the job all that much but the pay is so good it feels crazy to leave.

Re: Ask HN: What are the downsides of working at FAANG?

#23

Post by logicalmonster »

dataangel wrote: post #19
logicalmonster wrote: post #18

For me, it's 2 big reasons. 1) Dealing with climbing the corporate ladder, covering your ass from backstabbers, and all sorts of company politics are bad enough to deal with in fairly small companies where you might have a handful of business relationships to deal with, let alone in mega-corporations where you might be working in one small project department with dozens and dozens of people and several layers of mana…

> preaching anti-whiteness and anti-male hatred. I do some consulting for companies and have been put on a handful of their internal mailing lists so I directly see what kind of racist filth goes out to the actual employees. As somebody very skeptical of this characterization but that admittedly does not work in FAANG I would love to see a copy and pasted example.

I prefer not to break NDA's or risk doxxing at this time, but here are 2 fairly recent examples that have leaked in the mass media from large corporations.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/coca-cola-accused-of-re...

https://nypost.com/2021/10/29/att-offers-staff-critical-race...

Re: Ask HN: What are the downsides of working at FAANG?

#25

Post by UncleMeat »

logicalmonster wrote: post #23
dataangel wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> preaching anti-whiteness and anti-male hatred. I do some consulting for companies and have been put on a handful of their internal mailing lists so I directly see what kind of racist filth goes out to the actual employees. As somebody very skeptical of this characterization but that admittedly does not work in FAANG I would love to see a copy and pasted example.

I prefer not to break NDA's or risk doxxing at this time, but here are 2 fairly recent examples that have leaked in the mass media from large corporations. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/coca-cola-accused-of-re... https://nypost.com/2021/10/29/att-offers-staff-critical-race...

Famous FAANG companies: Coca-Cola and AT&T.

Re: Ask HN: What are the downsides of working at FAANG?

#26

Post by logicalmonster »

UncleMeat wrote: post #25
logicalmonster wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer not to break NDA's or risk doxxing at this time, but here are 2 fairly recent examples that have leaked in the mass media from large corporations. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/coca-cola-accused-of-re... https://nypost.com/2021/10/29/att-offers-staff-critical-race...

Famous FAANG companies: Coca-Cola and AT&T.

You've either missed the principle discussed here or are being willfully disingenuous.

Re: Ask HN: What are the downsides of working at FAANG?

#27

Post by dehrmann »

logicalmonster wrote: post #23
dataangel wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> preaching anti-whiteness and anti-male hatred. I do some consulting for companies and have been put on a handful of their internal mailing lists so I directly see what kind of racist filth goes out to the actual employees. As somebody very skeptical of this characterization but that admittedly does not work in FAANG I would love to see a copy and pasted example.

I prefer not to break NDA's or risk doxxing at this time, but here are 2 fairly recent examples that have leaked in the mass media from large corporations. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/coca-cola-accused-of-re... https://nypost.com/2021/10/29/att-offers-staff-critical-race...

I don't doubt that racism like this sneaks into D&I presentations, but I have to call out that the sources are the Daily Mail and NY Post--both are known for bias and not being especially reliable sources. At the same time, I don't think more authoritative, centrist news outlets would cover this story, either.

Re: Ask HN: What are the downsides of working at FAANG?

#28

Post by worker767424 »

I've been at two FAANGs. They're all different and it varies by company and team.

Some the more general reasons to not work at one are

- The tech stack is idiosyncratic

- You won't necessarily be exposed to the same breadth of experience

- You won't know most people at the company

- Less agency as an engineer

- More organizational overhead

- You're not good at leetcode or don't want to put in the time

- Your work is often less connected to a tangible problem

- You're a cog

Reasons to work at one

- The pay

- It lends credibility to your resume

- Higher ceiling for star performers

- Stability

- Learn how things work at scale

- Better perks

Oh, one huge one: different people are better at different stages of a product's lifecycle. No time for tests, monitoring, alterting, or code reviews? An early startup might be a better place because they don't have time for those, either.

Re: Ask HN: What are the downsides of working at FAANG?

#29

Post by 35mm_guy »

FAANG is just big business these days - beside the usual corporate issues, FAANG created many new corporate problems on their own. Entitlement and the signal to noise ratio are the worst offenders, and of course stacked ranking that is practiced in one form or another.

What FAANG these days has going for it is just the compensation. But that attracts the wrong crowd when compensation is the only motivator to work for a company. Talk to hiring managers, they have a ton of issues on the hire and fire front.

You might be surprised, but most high potentials are looking beyond compensation and want to do something they can identify with and are passionate about while having a good work-life balance. One of the things that makes them high potentials to begin with, compared to the leetcode solvers, who are a dime a dozen and are just compliant little worker bees who glady exploits themselves.

For me FAANG was a good time, but as a seasoned professional I never had to jump through any hoops. But it's not the FAANG I once joined and was passionate about. That FAANG is not at home anymore. Sure, YMMV. Just my personal experience and point of view.

Re: Ask HN: What are the downsides of working at FAANG?

#30

Post by worker767424 »

logicalmonster wrote: post #18

For me, it's 2 big reasons. 1) Dealing with climbing the corporate ladder, covering your ass from backstabbers, and all sorts of company politics are bad enough to deal with in fairly small companies where you might have a handful of business relationships to deal with, let alone in mega-corporations where you might be working in one small project department with dozens and dozens of people and several layers of mana…

> Big companies have essentially become centers for identity politics

Whenever I see something about "blacklist" or "master vs main," I wish I could ask the people behind it "don't you have something better to be working on?" It got to the point that "blacklist" is a trigger for me, not because I find the term offensive, but because I don't want to deal with the flamewar that's soon to follow. I go out of my way to not name things "blacklist" or "blocklist" just to avoid this.

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