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

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251–260 of 449 posts

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

#251

Ex-Netflix here. I was a senior dev at Microsoft and Netflix (8 years of professional experience) and decided to switch to freelance for a variety of reasons. Eventually that turned into starting a company that provides a home for ex-FAANG (etc) devs that want to switch to freelancing. Facet Development is a freelancer network made up exclusively of ex-FAANG engineers. Facet does the work of finding freelancing jobs/…

Wow, this is a great idea. I can see both sides of it:

"Look, you've always wanted to jump ship to freelance, but it's hard and you're used to being heavily supported by your org. We have that for you."

"Look, you want to hire these people but you can't. I can, and they can complete your project in a super high quality way, you just need to pay for it. We can be there next week."

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

#252
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great article about the promotion process and the employee dynamic at Google. It very accurately summarises much of why I quit there so quickly after coming in via an acquisition. That conversation made me realize that I’m not Google. I provide a service to Google in exchange for money. I was very lucky to have a friend who taught me that very early (not about Google specifically, the same applies to any company). Wo…

I have the idea that google enployees are paid a ton of money when they join, so why do they care so much about being promoted?

Because until you get to L5, your job is always at risk. If you spend a long enough time at the company without getting to L5 and without a really good justification, it starts to raise red flags.

Or so I've heard.

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

#254

Why are almost all the replies by ex Google engineers? I thought I would see an even distribution from all FAANG companies but replies are pretty heavily skewed toward ex google employees. Is this because 1) Google culture is completely different from other FAANG companies? 2) Engineers at other FAANG companies dont quit their job? 3) or they dont browse HN in their free time?

The companies are all of varying sizes and distribution of types of workers. Google has a heavy engineering component to it - Apple and maybe to a lesser degree Amazon does as well, but one thing about Apple is that it has a culture of generally not talking about work as much outside of work, in part due to the whole wanting to keep things secret. Netflix as a company is also just small at around 5000 employees last I heard. Facebook is somewhere around 20k I believe at HQ, although that number seems to go up every time I hear more recent numbers, Google is at ~60kish I remember reading, and Amazon is around 100k I believe? Apple is at a little over 120k employees, but Apple and Amazon both have a lot of non-engineer workers as well (retail and warehouse employees, respectively).

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

#255
Throwaway for obvious reasons. Just to add some AMZN perspective:

Amazon has big company problems just as much as any of these. In fact, from what I've heard from friends working for other FAANG and similar companies, AMZN tends to have a bigger proportion of terrible managers. This is because the Leadership Principles can be interpreted in several ways and more often than not, gets interpreted in a way that works for managers to push their agenda. The promotion process is a joke. There's a lot of politics, and you have no control over when you're getting promoted. For those that believe that they had enough leverage on when to get promoted, IMO they simply were at the right place at the right time (or as I've seen, got promoted later than they think they deserved to.)

AMZN managers like to quote Jeff a lot. Two of those have worked terribly at the org I work at:

"good intentions don't work" has introduced so many processes in the org that getting actual work done is getting harder by the day. Engineers don't like to do project management, but all these processes are a micromanager's wet dream.

"Amazon is a great place to fail". It really is not. AMZN is a terrible place to fail because once you fail, they bring it up every single time to ensure you don't have leverage. AMZN managers don't seem to appreciate growth. Or they're intentionally blind towards it to ensure they can squeeze a few more years from you while keeping you at the same level. Title being connected to both compensation and the kind of work you get sucks, and if you joined AMZN after the boom in late 2015, compensation is definitely not a reason to stay.

The only folks who are happy at AMZN are those that aren't deluding themselves by saying they are making a real impact. If you're anywhere below senior SDE you're not making any impact. Of course, exceptions exist.

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

#256
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the benefit of waiting for promotion and then leaving? Any benefits you gain from that? Naïvely I'd assume it'd make sense to collect some of the extra cash for a while.

Maybe for some people it's a game? I have no idea. The pay isn't as progressive as their recruiters claim. A high-performing Senior SWE makes money pretty close to what a newly-promoted Staff SWE makes.

But a newly promoted staff engineer has more ability to move up in pay in annual reviews.

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

#257

I served at Google as an SRE for 2+yrs. I burnt out and ragequit. Now I'm an SRE at a startup. I hear that the median time of service for FAANG SREs is just shy of 2yrs. Dirty open secret if it is true.

Just curious, did you burn out because of the workload?

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

#258
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great article about the promotion process and the employee dynamic at Google. It very accurately summarises much of why I quit there so quickly after coming in via an acquisition. That conversation made me realize that I’m not Google. I provide a service to Google in exchange for money. I was very lucky to have a friend who taught me that very early (not about Google specifically, the same applies to any company). Wo…

I have the idea that google enployees are paid a ton of money when they join, so why do they care so much about being promoted?

[deleted]

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

#259

I served at Google as an SRE for 2+yrs. I burnt out and ragequit. Now I'm an SRE at a startup. I hear that the median time of service for FAANG SREs is just shy of 2yrs. Dirty open secret if it is true.

> I hear that the median time of service for FAANG SREs is just shy of 2yrs. Dirty open secret if it is true. That's most places, FAANGs notwithstanding. 6 months getting up to speed, realizing what a clusterfuck it is by 12 months, dealing with it to 18 months, and then getting to the I-Want-Out point at 24+ months. Plus the whole "jump ship every 2-3 years to maximize salary" thing is possible for FAANG-level engin…

devops are like brake pads on trucks, you stomp the hell out of them whenever you didn't look far enough ahead, and when they start to make a squeaking noise you throw them out and get new ones.

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

#260

Ex-Google SWE L5 (Senior) - Left in 2014 after almost 9 years spanning from my late 20's to mid 30's. I really can't complain, and would easily rank it as my most fulfilling and lucrative full-time employment experience so far, though the previous and post employment were in defense and startups. In short, I left due to burnout, though I think it wasn't so much the team/work as it was my character lends itself to bur…

What is L5?

L5 is one of Google's internal levels. They're putting it there to let people know where they were in Google's hierarchy and they note that it denotes Senior. From what I know, people generally start at 3 right out of school.
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