191–200 of 418 posts
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Yes, I did. At the age of 42! Funny you should ask. I posted about my experience in a recent thread a few weeks back. Search for my user name here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21299546
I read and really liked your story about going to Cambridge when you first posted it. Did you find a PhD helped you find more interesting gigs?
> First, what is the environment like for exiting high-level former-FANG employees? For most employers, it will be a positive. There may be a handful of very small startups that see it as a negative, but the reality is a very small startup is so different from a giant tech firm that the hiring team is probably correct in assuming you've never had to do something incredibly arduous without enormous support (I once had…
> Just realize it's not going to be anything like a giant tech firm, where you don't realize they actually do 99% of the job for you. This. So much this. All those teams of devops people, the SREs, the QA people, the network engineers and all the other unsung heroes don't exist in a startup yet the people who only ever worked at BigCo assume that they do and so forget about all of the problems involved in building a…
> First, what is the environment like for exiting high-level former-FANG employees? For most employers, it will be a positive. There may be a handful of very small startups that see it as a negative, but the reality is a very small startup is so different from a giant tech firm that the hiring team is probably correct in assuming you've never had to do something incredibly arduous without enormous support (I once had…
> I once had to spend 6 months reverse engineering a video output [...] this is the sort of shit you will do at an actual hard-tech startup I don't know about hard-tech, but it seems to me that most startups can't afford to have a person work on one project for 6 months.
> First, what is the environment like for exiting high-level former-FANG employees? For most employers, it will be a positive. There may be a handful of very small startups that see it as a negative, but the reality is a very small startup is so different from a giant tech firm that the hiring team is probably correct in assuming you've never had to do something incredibly arduous without enormous support (I once had…
I've found FAANG experience typically a negative in hiring. (note: "typically" not "always"). That kind of big company experience doesn't really prepare you for the day-to-day, frantic, resource-starved environment of most startups. The consequence of most decisions is more immediate* -- and can be company-killing. Whereas at any big company there's rarely true pressure (lots of pressure, very much so, but in my gf's…
But I do know some one who single handled rescued a big snafu on a quarterly run for British telecom, your talking about hundreds on millions
> First, what is the environment like for exiting high-level former-FANG employees? For most employers, it will be a positive. There may be a handful of very small startups that see it as a negative, but the reality is a very small startup is so different from a giant tech firm that the hiring team is probably correct in assuming you've never had to do something incredibly arduous without enormous support (I once had…
> I once had to spend 6 months reverse engineering a video output [...] this is the sort of shit you will do at an actual hard-tech startup I don't know about hard-tech, but it seems to me that most startups can't afford to have a person work on one project for 6 months.
These kind of posts keep making me think I should go work for a FAANG so I can actually retire one day. Anyways, as someone on the other side, who has never worked for or applied to FAANG, I have a few reactions. First, your salary is absolutely ridiculous. I know hard working people who have built their own businesses with blood and sweat, and they still don't make as much as a slacker engineer at FAANG. So I'd say…
I never worked at FAANG but even after more than 10 years working in tech, it still surprises me how undervalued well working tooling is. I'm not talking about 100% automation with infinite possibilities. Just really basic stuff, like deployment or setting up a development environment. That should always be a no-brainer.
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I've seen consulting being suggested freq as a viable gig to support yourself when you run out of money to pay the bills. How does this work? Register on Upwork or fiverr? What if your capabilities as a consultant are inadequate? What if you struggle more than you actually did at a full time job? How do you position yourself for the gig?
I wrote 'big consulting', because there are many large consultancy firms that would be happy to hire anyone with FAANG experience. Capgemini, Accenture, Deloitte, PWC, etc. Many of them work with companies that are being disrupted and are trying to stay relevant. This creates interesting opportunities.
What would you do with your career if you could do anything you wanted? It's hard to give advice without a sense of what you'd rather be doing. For whatever it's worth, I'm going through a similar dilemma. My compensation is high, but I don't feel fulfilled by the work and there are other things I'd rather do for less money. Unlike you I'm in a startup and leaving would really mess things up for them, so I'm holding…
You do realize that this feeling is not mutual? Companies don't give a shit about their employees as long as it doesn't benefit them. They are not humans, they are "things" made out of humans. And the trick is that they use social structure to scam you into thinking that leaving the company makes things worse for your other "human" team mates. So yes, right now they want to keep you, but once you are not essential an…
Unless this is all cash for a privately held startup in which case, where do I sign up?
Regrets = 0. Well, there are no Mexican food restaurants here.
> First, what is the environment like for exiting high-level former-FANG employees? For most employers, it will be a positive. There may be a handful of very small startups that see it as a negative, but the reality is a very small startup is so different from a giant tech firm that the hiring team is probably correct in assuming you've never had to do something incredibly arduous without enormous support (I once had…