31–40 of 40 posts
Maybe it is because I am more senior now, FAANG or not reveals very little of your character or quality of work when looking at a particular someone. More like a baseline guarantee but that is about it
Ex-FAANG, now startup
It 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.
Yeah, same sort of experience here. It was interesting work, and I had some decent teammates, but every other person was an asshole, especially as they got further up the management chain. I'd never work for FAANG ever again, it's not worth the mental health damage. I hear similar from friends who work for big pharma. Soulless corporate vampirism.
You could go work for some insurance company's cost center IT department and experience all of those same negatives while experiencing none of the positives that a FAANG brings to the plate to your career.
(For argument's sake, by "FAANG", let's refer to all similar "top" tech companies, not just the companies represented by those 5 letters)
I guess the most disappointing part for me was Google's culture, or at least what it's become. I was surrounded by coworkers with a tenure of 10-15 years hired straight from college who had no idea about life outside of campus and google3. Those poor folks got brainwashed by HR into believing that most non-work related conversations or, god forbid, a joke will undoubtedly be offending to someone. Honestly, I think I'd rather work with jerks than in such a sterile, dull environment.
On the bright side, the tech was pretty good. I wouldn't call it great, but they have everything you'd ever need. The code quality was above average despite over-engineering. The praised culture of openness is long gone but you can still somewhat feel its scent. The email-centric approach to communication was 100x better than anything else I'd seen. And there's a chance you can get on a team that actually does some good (but those are typically at DeepMind, Verily etc.)
If there's no better option, I'd say to give it a try. After all, it's just a job.
If 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 …
That's generally the case until the politics target your fellow employees. Abortion is a healthcare issue and an HR issue that may affect any employee, and anti-LGBTQIA politics definitely can affect your co-workers' rights and their healthcare. Religion overstepping in the workplace, especially when laws are involved is another political issue that affects employees' relationship with their employer. These types of…
I know a lot of ex-Googlers. They all got sick of this stuff and either left, or hate the firm but stay due to inertia. Over time more and more peel away. I don't know any who joined pre-2010 who still respect the company, and the reasons are always the same. They see it as having become a 1984 style Big Brother.
Off topic: Now that Facebook is Meta, the FAANG acronym can now be MANGA.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's generally the case until the politics target your fellow employees. Abortion is a healthcare issue and an HR issue that may affect any employee, and anti-LGBTQIA politics definitely can affect your co-workers' rights and their healthcare. Religion overstepping in the workplace, especially when laws are involved is another political issue that affects employees' relationship with their employer. These types of…
That's the dodge that makes people angry. The left simply define whatever they personally care about politically/ideologically as fair game for the workplace because it affects other people (tautological), or they see themselves as in opposition to some sort of vague evil that they have to defend helpless colleagues from. So they impose radical ideology on everyone and if anyone objects, saying it's politics and they…
Corporations are just organizational machines for making their shareholders money. I'm sorry you're just now learning this, so late in the game.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the dodge that makes people angry. The left simply define whatever they personally care about politically/ideologically as fair game for the workplace because it affects other people (tautological), or they see themselves as in opposition to some sort of vague evil that they have to defend helpless colleagues from. So they impose radical ideology on everyone and if anyone objects, saying it's politics and they…
The only thing they did wrong was fool you into believing that a private corporation can be a bastion for free expression. Sorry, that is what academia is for. Corporations are just organizational machines for making their shareholders money. I'm sorry you're just now learning this, so late in the game.
I don't think academia is any better, the culture that is messing up tech firms came out of academia.
If 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.