Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#371

Post by mrfredward » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #346

This thread is seriously in need of some tough love. @faang0722, you're being a slacker, and not doing right by either your company or yourself. You're at one of the top companies in the world, and are safe from the jobs disaster that's gripping the entire country. Millions of people are desperate to receive $600-1600 from the government this month because they are unable to work. Millions are putting on shitty facem…

>You say the company is evidently pleased with your work and that may be true, but now you're part of the problem. You think the company tolerates shitty work, so you've decided to tolerate shitty work. Don't.

For a non-manager in a large organization, the choices are pretty much accept your work environment or leave it. Fighting the entire company's culture as a low level employee is like trying to move a mountain by pushing harder.

To OP: Accept the pace your department moves at, and look for little victories. Your never gonna get to write a new app in a week and be a hero in your current company/department, but there is still some satisfaction to be found in ironing out little wrinkles one at a time.

If/when you leave, look for a job you want to go to, rather than just looking for a way out of your current job.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#372

Post by qntty » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #346

This thread is seriously in need of some tough love. @faang0722, you're being a slacker, and not doing right by either your company or yourself. You're at one of the top companies in the world, and are safe from the jobs disaster that's gripping the entire country. Millions of people are desperate to receive $600-1600 from the government this month because they are unable to work. Millions are putting on shitty facem…

AKA, please work harder for your corporate masters because poor people are suffering. What's that? You want your corporate masters to pay a fair share of tax so poor will suffer less? No, just work harder and that extra work won't benefit people who need it.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#373

Post by qqj » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

yelloweyes wrote: post #357

khazhoux wrote: post #346

This thread is seriously in need of some tough love. @faang0722, you're being a slacker, and not doing right by either your company or yourself. You're at one of the top companies in the world, and are safe from the jobs disaster that's gripping the entire country. Millions of people are desperate to receive $600-1600 from the government this month because they are unable to work. Millions are putting on shitty facem…

why are "tough love" people always douchebags?

because they don't have solutions or useful advise. They don't think anything is wrong but the person who's presenting the actual problem. It's sometimes useful to consider the possibility you're wrong, but what OP describes is clearly not unique to his team or company. Many of us are in the same boat. So at least in this particular case, the "toughlover" is indeed, a "douchebag".

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#374

Post by wtracy » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

gajjanag wrote: post #314

jlj wrote: post #305

> I normally work about one day trickle out my changes during the the week. The other days I only open my computer for standup and if I get an IM. There is a term for this called "sandbagging." > I don't feel what I'm doing is ethnically wrong, because the company is evidently pleased with my current productivity, but I find it unsatisfying and like a waste of my time on earth. Sounds like you have a motivation and p…

> Those kids of work may even help get you promoted and open up more interesting projects. Do you have any anecdotes in support of this view? My general understanding is that working on such things (if it isn't part of your explicit job description) is usually met by at best gratitude from other people, but certainly not promotions. And there are definite risks: since it is time spent not on your "actual" job, it can…

This seems to be a common and expected way of getting promoted within Google: Their performance review system allows engineers to provide feedback on people from unrelated teams.

I don't know if any other company where this strategy is likely to get you ahead.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#375

Post by smattiso » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

dbalatero wrote: post #368

smattiso wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't listen to this guy. You don't have to change your own identity and your own personal compass to fit your company. You also don't have to succumb to the "starving Ethiopians" fallacy and take whatever crap job is given. This life has a billion paths you can take. Understand the tradeoffs and make a calculated decision but follow your own path. Granted you may end up homeless. But from experience there are way mo…

Parent is not asking them to do that: > So either start putting in your best work, or switch teams or company and see if it suits you better... or else accept that you're being a freeloader and pretending to do more work than you really are. It's definitely a choice here, but the point is the OP needs to actually make some active choices and decide what they're ok with.

I agree with what you are saying. The "tough-love" message is usually to "suck it up" and stay where you are. "Life sucks, get over it." My point is if you are smart enough to be in a FAANG you are smart enough to do great work and make an impact on this world. You don't have to settle for fixing tiny bugs in some admin page for an ad company. I know there are people that are 100% cool with doing that for $$$. If you are not cool with it, then figure out a way to change it because there are enough problems to solve that if you are a smart engineer and you aren't doing shit and hating your day then you are wasting your talent.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#376

Post by snowwrestler » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #353

khazhoux wrote: post #346

This thread is seriously in need of some tough love. @faang0722, you're being a slacker, and not doing right by either your company or yourself. You're at one of the top companies in the world, and are safe from the jobs disaster that's gripping the entire country. Millions of people are desperate to receive $600-1600 from the government this month because they are unable to work. Millions are putting on shitty facem…

OP is a freeloader at a rent seaker. Your simplistic morals fail to account for the bigger picture.

Well the point is that OP is obviously not happy being a freeloader, which is why they posted here about it.

This sort of tough-love feedback to really useful to someone looking for meaning in their work. The reality is, sometimes you have to make your own meaning. If what you're being handed at work is boring and easy, it can be self-love to start asking around for more interesting stuff to do.

Young people in particular can have a hard transition coming out of school, where the structure and goals are handed to you, into the "real world", where a lot of the rewards flow to people who have the ability and willingness to create structures and goals for themselves and others.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#377

Post by skybrian » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #353

khazhoux wrote: post #346

This thread is seriously in need of some tough love. @faang0722, you're being a slacker, and not doing right by either your company or yourself. You're at one of the top companies in the world, and are safe from the jobs disaster that's gripping the entire country. Millions of people are desperate to receive $600-1600 from the government this month because they are unable to work. Millions are putting on shitty facem…

OP is a freeloader at a rent seaker. Your simplistic morals fail to account for the bigger picture.

By bringing in the bigger picture, it seems you're just making the moral case stronger? That means he's profiting from rent seeking, just like the shareholders. (And probably is a shareholder too.) The money comes from the same places.

To complicate things a bit though, this looks like systematic failure in some parts of the organization. Doing your bit to try to fix that failure seems like a good cause.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#378

Post by USNetizen » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

Any organization that reaches a certain size will encounter things like this. The larger an organization gets, the more the productivity level tends to regress towards the mean. So, people with higher productivity will likely feel unfulfilled and people at the lower end will still feel inundated. It is both a mechanism of success and a detriment to such organizations. Successful because it standardizes things, ensuring more consistent quality and productivity overall - the end goal, after all, is to eliminate uncertainty as much as possible in daily operations. Detriment because, pertaining to the the consistency of quality and productivity, it tends to regress at a lower level.

The salaries tend to be higher simply because these large organizations are typically much better capitalized, not necessarily because the people that work there are that much better than everyone else. This is why a lot of high performers tend to strike off on their own at some point in their careers - dissatisfaction with mediocrity. But then their own companies, if successful, grow to a level where, once more, productivity and quality regresses towards the mean and they find themselves in a self-created bureaucracy as the organization matures.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#379

Post by jasonpeacock » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #360

SubuSS wrote: post #206

I worked for Amazon (like you:) but that was 5 years ago. Things were a lot more breakneck then - but I can see how things could’ve slowed down with the 3x dev count now. As many have pointed out, it depends on teams. I have seen engineers in retail whose sole job was ensuring data entered the catalog correctly through the input system and fix any errant data. I also saw teams like mine (early kindle / early dynamodb…

> But it had 3 principals and 5 sde3s in a time when the whole company had I can only imagine what principal / SDE3s that deliver products as big as DynamoDB got paid in bonuses/salary. Total comp had to be $500k-$1m+, no?

Nope. There's no bonuses at Amazon (at PE/SDE levels at least), and there are compensation bands for each level. A top-ranked SDE3 that delivered DynamoDB should have similar compensation as a top-ranked SDE3 working on internal tools.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#380

Post by tmaly » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

SubuSS wrote: post #206

I worked for Amazon (like you:) but that was 5 years ago. Things were a lot more breakneck then - but I can see how things could’ve slowed down with the 3x dev count now. As many have pointed out, it depends on teams. I have seen engineers in retail whose sole job was ensuring data entered the catalog correctly through the input system and fix any errant data. I also saw teams like mine (early kindle / early dynamodb…

I think that is solid advice. Take the bull by the horns and make your own destiny. There is not much downside to reaching out to the legends but so much upside potential here.