Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#421

Post by Bartweiss » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

selimthegrim wrote: post #332

Bartweiss wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that helps is that Western Mass doesn't have to be remote. If you're in Savoy, yeah, you'd better like nature more than people. But the Springfield metro area has pretty cheap rent and is still 600k people with colleges and companies and a great food and music scene up in Northhampton. It's also within tolerable driving or train distance of Boston if there's something you really want to get to. Working remo…

Would you say Providence is similar?

Yeah, now that you mention it. I mostly wasn't counting capital cities because they tend to have higher rents, infrastructure and gridlock issues, and other things I think of as "big city problems". (Or they're too small or run down to be appealing.)

But Providence is actually a nice exception; lots of events, good food and activities, several colleges, but pretty cheap housing and not terribly dense or gridlocked.

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#422

Post by rericks » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 4:08 PM UTC

bsimpson wrote: post #160

CydeWeys wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with Google has been the opposite, for what it's worth. I've been rewarded for, as an IC SWE, starting conversations with random people across the entire company to make things happen, and then executing on it. I even presented my launch at I/O this past May. I think it helps that I'm on a smaller team. So from my experience, it still very much seems like a "look for something that needs doing and do it…

It seems to depend a lot on your team and your manager. It's the first place I've worked where the vibe is: "you're clever: find something useful to do" from my very first day.

I recently joined a FANG and this is something that causes me a lot of anxiety. Our repos are hundreds of thousands of lines of code; how on earth can I, as a new hire, decide unilaterally that something needs to be added or reworked? I'm not at a startup, and the company's mission is decided at a level far above my paygrade. I need some degree of management to know what to do.

I'm also not a very social person, and randomly chatting with people around the company for project ideas is something that I'm seemingly incapable of doing.

Will this cause me to fail at my job? How do I learn to be more proactive with these kinds of things?

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#423

Post by friday99 » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #269

rhymenoceros wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that metric, like any metric, is both easy to game _and_ can provide misleading information. Measuring number of commits? Create fewer, larger commits. Measuring commit size? Pull in more third-party libraries, even where it does't make sense. Author count? Add more/less documentation and recruit or inhibit new devs depending on what your goal is. Not to mention the number of commits/authors before and…

Ok, then find another way to measure developer productivity, or reliability in production, or customer features delivered. If you can’t find a measurable benefit to a refactoring (or anything else, really) then maybe it was not worth doing in the first place.

The obsession with measuring is hilarious. There are plenty of things in life (and jobs) that aren't measurable and are worth doing. Probably all of the important things are actually unmeasurable. Think about it this way, if its so easy you can measure it, it probably isn't very important in the grand scheme of things.

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#424

Post by friday99 » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 4:27 PM UTC

gbustomtv5 wrote: post #340

rhymenoceros wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that metric, like any metric, is both easy to game _and_ can provide misleading information. Measuring number of commits? Create fewer, larger commits. Measuring commit size? Pull in more third-party libraries, even where it does't make sense. Author count? Add more/less documentation and recruit or inhibit new devs depending on what your goal is. Not to mention the number of commits/authors before and…

Normalizing commits number per author is not difficult. https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/lsi/sigir04-cf-norm.pdf Goodhart’s law is not applicable to scientific management because metrics have different purpose.

Goodhart's law is entirely applicable to management (adding scientific in front doesn't actually mean anything). That is one of the prime areas of applicability. People change their behavior to increase a metric at the cost of decreasing other more important things.

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#425

Post by tankdoan » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 4:31 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #368

tankdoan wrote: post #91

Ex Netflix. Joined a promising startup with 1 - Great mission 2 - Impressive engineering culture 3 - Super boring name: Farmers Business Network FBN is the only reason I haven't moved away from the Bay Area. We're hiring too, if anybody wants to shoot me an email I'll forward it along. tan@farmersbusinessnetwork.com

What tech are you guys working with? What's your stance on remote?

Python, React, R, and we're actively killing off PHP. Infrastructure is AWS and Docker. Unfortunately, the company is not pro-remote :(

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#426

Post by friday99 » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

cagenut wrote: post #416

heyoni wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, I think you’re being pessimistic here. I’m not OP but I’m in the boat and I turn down public assistance because it’s not what it was made for and the system is strained enough...also, I wouldn’t judge anyone else for taking it.

yes it is me, the pessimist, encouraging you to accept free healthcare. not you, the ideologue, who so deeply believes in your place above the poors that you self-impose austerity.

He specifically said he doesn't judge anyone or attach shame to accepting free health care. He doesn't accept it because he doesn't need it as much as others and does not want to take it from someone in greater need. Your position is anti-social and akin to attending an event where there are treats available for children, but you take them as an adult and some children get none, but you feel no shame.

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#427

Post by johan_larson » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

dhnsmakala wrote: post #396

dlor wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to explain, not because of NDA but because of context specific things. Almost everything I do is open source, but can't fit into a comment. My only advice to people at BigCo is to make sure you have a good reason for doing whatever it is you're doing. Your boss telling you to do something is not always a good reason to do it. And make sure you have some kind of metrics that show your work is important. If y…

So say my boss assigns me a task of questionable value. Should I really question it having been there for a few months, or would they take it as I don't trust their judgement? I just started recently and was considering leaving for a startup, but have decided to stay and see if it gets better (I have only been at BigCo for few months). Mainly I feel like I'm not really needed, and it's a long existing and complex sys…

If your boss tells you to do something, you should do it. "Make your boss happy" is generally the way to thrive in a hierarchy, whatever the stated principles of the organization or how they formally evaluate employees. If your boss is happy with you, it will all turn out ok; if your boss isn't happy with you, nothing will save you in the end.

I understand the initial project you're assigned may not seem terribly important. But that's because you're new and you don't really know how things work yet, so they can't assign you anything really complicated. Do the initial not-quite-busywork successfully, and more important and interesting work will come along.

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#428

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

p1esk wrote: post #224

hamstercat wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the salary offered by FAANG and other big tech companies, saving 200k$ is very doable. Yes some people are in credit card debts, and that proportion is higher than it should, but saving that amount of money is not unheard of. Most people just spend all they have (and a little more), which leads to not having that kind of savings. Doing so in just 4 years may be harder (again, depends on your spending), bu…

If his total comp was $300k, which is normal for a senior google dev, it's entirely possible to save $100k per year, even if the rent is $3.5k/mo.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#429

Post by ccantana » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 5:21 PM UTC

synotna wrote: post #403

ccantana wrote: post #28

I was a SWE L3 at Google for three years. I left after having similar problems with the promotion process mentioned by others. Since then, have moved from SF to Ecuador and started a humor publication explicitly making fun of companies like FANG ( https://techloaf.io ). It’s very cathartic...

Fyi, I subscribed and then got the "subscribe now" popup on the "thanks for subscribing" page

Good catch, thanks! Fixed now

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#430

Post by a13n » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 6:08 PM UTC

MoBattah wrote: post #284

a13n wrote: post #4

Running my own bootstrapped SaaS startup, Canny ( https://canny.io ). I've always wanted to do a startup. Last year I wrote a blog post about the biggest lessons learned during the transition. Seems pretty relevant. https://hackernoon.com/software-engineer-to-saas-founder-c16... Also left SF to be a digital nomad. SF is so expensive and if you aren't fundraising you don't need to be there. There's so much of the worl…

Digital nomad - are you AirBnBing around various countries or are you staying in coliving/coworking communities? I ask because I'm interested in doing that soon.

Have lived in Airbnbs for the past year and a half :)