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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?

#31

Post by worker767424 »

closeparen wrote: post #17

Impact. At a smaller but rapidly growing company, you could end up personally implementing or leading a significant chunk of the product. At FAANG you are likely to be working on a small, not very exciting corner of something. Focus. One of the FAANG culture diseases is to do a lot of engineering work of dubious to negative value. Doing NIH versions of popular open source projects or migrating and replacing stuff tha…

> a lot of engineering work of dubious to negative value

Part of this is that FAANG is often willing to spend $20M to try to move the needle 1%, or $100M for the next big thing, even if there's only a small chance it works.

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

#32

Post by closeparen »

worker767424 wrote: post #31
closeparen wrote: post #17

Impact. At a smaller but rapidly growing company, you could end up personally implementing or leading a significant chunk of the product. At FAANG you are likely to be working on a small, not very exciting corner of something. Focus. One of the FAANG culture diseases is to do a lot of engineering work of dubious to negative value. Doing NIH versions of popular open source projects or migrating and replacing stuff tha…

> a lot of engineering work of dubious to negative value Part of this is that FAANG is often willing to spend $20M to try to move the needle 1%, or $100M for the next big thing, even if there's only a small chance it works.

I don’t mind working on an optimization or a market hypothesis, but there is also a lot of churn for organizational politics and promotion gaming reasons, which sucks to get stuck doing.

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

#33

Post by stuxnet79 »

dataangel wrote: post #20
smt88 wrote: post #11

My relatives work at Amazon and Netflix. None of them have time for anything other than work. The culture at those places seems unbelievably toxic. I am the same age as them, make more money, live in a more pleasant place (i.e. not an overpriced West Coast city), and have a lot more free time and freedom. I did this by working at (or starting) boring lifestyle software companies that sell for $10-100M.

Dumb question, what is lifestyle software? Asking so I can make and sell a $10M company someday.

An insulting term coined by SV types to refer to businesses which are not "changing the world" / aiming for a billion dollar exit. Instead they focus on providing useful goods or services through modest means (no VCs) thus enabling founders to sustain a non-work post 5pm "lifestyle".

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

#35

Post by robolange »

ALittleLight wrote: post #13

My manager called me in to his office. I had to sign an NDA before he would even tell me what it was about. I was getting assigned to a secret, hush hush, project. Something exciting and new. I was to work on... The Fire Phone. Later, when my manager joined the program too I got to demo the Fire Phone for him. I could see disappointment in his face as he asked me - "Will you use this phone when it comes out?" I told…

I've never worked at a FAANG, but still this resonated with me. I'm 20 years into my software engineering career, and if I'm being honest, I've accomplished nothing. Literally, not one project I've ever worked on has seen any significant deployment or had any notable impact on the world, not even my small part of it. Just project after project that's ultimately abandoned or shuttered. Sometimes the company goes under. Sometimes the lab closes. Sometimes not, but I burn out and leave just as you described. In the end, the result is the same: no impact of my work on the world, but also no impact of the failure on my "career".

I'd love to work at a competant and impactful organization on something meaningful. The problem is, I genuinely believe that the probability of such an organization existing, and of them hiring, and of my having the right skill set, and of my learning about, applying to, and passing the interview, is essentially 0. Now, I struggle daily to avoid the cynicism you described so well.

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

#36

Post by cm2012 »

ALittleLight wrote: post #13

My manager called me in to his office. I had to sign an NDA before he would even tell me what it was about. I was getting assigned to a secret, hush hush, project. Something exciting and new. I was to work on... The Fire Phone. Later, when my manager joined the program too I got to demo the Fire Phone for him. I could see disappointment in his face as he asked me - "Will you use this phone when it comes out?" I told…

It's seems to me to be a good sign that a big company has lots of teams with failed products. Being willing to fail with big swings is pretty key to staying relevant.

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

#37

Post by m0llusk »

The big money there attracts creeps and backstabbers. Many weasel their way in with modest qualifications and a lot of bluster and maybe some leetcode, then they bully people and jockey for position once in. Lots of taking credit for what others did and aiming for the big office. Worked at Apple from the early days of the NeXT merger until OS X came out. Toward the end security guards razzed me for swearing at the servers that kept crashing from instability. I had to make sure the next round of developer tools worked and they just liked to sit and watch and make notes about any peculiar actions from developers.

So, yeah. If you like endless, bloodthirsty cutthroat competition under florescent lights and security guards treating you like freaky garbage then how could you not want the modest benefit that comes with working from a huge company instead of a smaller one that is actually in contact with customers and doing meaningful work for them on a regular basis?

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

#38

Post by enigmatic02 »

I worked there and had to leave.

$ is good, sometimes the team can be good, but there are lot of drawbacks: coworkers are spoiled, learning is stunted because most things are taken care of, more about solving people problems than product problems as you move up, more about performing for specific individuals rather than helping customers, scope is limited, etc.

This article resonated with me: https://www.productlessons.xyz/article/why-harvard-faang-ove...

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

#40

Post by smt88 »

dataangel wrote: post #20
smt88 wrote: post #11

My relatives work at Amazon and Netflix. None of them have time for anything other than work. The culture at those places seems unbelievably toxic. I am the same age as them, make more money, live in a more pleasant place (i.e. not an overpriced West Coast city), and have a lot more free time and freedom. I did this by working at (or starting) boring lifestyle software companies that sell for $10-100M.

Dumb question, what is lifestyle software? Asking so I can make and sell a $10M company someday.

> what is lifestyle software?

Sorry, I meant that it's a lifestyle business that sells software (as a service).

Lifestyle businesses are so-called because they support the owners having a certain lifestyle. As the sibling comment says, this is something that is generally admired outside of Silicon Valley and mocked within Silicon Valley. I feel sad for people who are proud of working their lives away, but that's a different topic...

> Asking so I can make and sell a $10M company someday.

There is a formula to it, but it's still not a guarantee. Here is the formula I use:

1. Meet people in boring jobs or industries, or just make a diverse group of adult friends

2. Talk to these people about what wastes the most of their time

3. Find a way to automate it

4. Get your friends in that industry to sell it for you

The biggest problem is #4. Getting the sales is hard because most industries are stagnant because of deep-rooted complacency. The ideal way to do it is to get someone who can be your first customer, convince them of the potential, and get them to be on your board.

It definitely helps if you're overpaid in your day job and can just pay other people to build prototypes for you. Trying to build prototypes in your evenings/weekends is pretty brutal and violates the whole idea behind this.

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