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Downsides to working at a tech giant

blog.garrytan.com

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Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#311

Post by cosmodisk »

georgeburdell wrote: post #212
keithwhor wrote: post #90

The pessimism in this thread really bothers me. I’ve read anecdotes on entrepreneurship being on the decline, but it pains me to read so many negative takes on startups. We’re actively training our young people to avoid taking risks, and it’s going to fuck us — especially if some of those young people have the ambition be early employees at, say, a startup that takes on climate change in a big way. Look — the fact th…

FAANG pay has gone through the roof while startup pay has not. I am not a software engineer, but I still work in a field rife with startups. I don’t even work at a FAANG, but I do work for the industry leader in my field and I’m making a safe $250k annually after 5 years. I have gotten a few startup offers just to test the waters and I’m generally being offered $175k + $50k-$100k in stock options. Sounds OK if you ex…

It's a bit sad how the rest of the world don't put such reward for dev jobs.Even here, in London,I'd need to be a quant to pull such a salary.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#312

Post by Tehdasi »

pjc50 wrote: post #46
thaumasiotes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was young and wanted to work on problems I thought would have high impact, shit they did have large impact. I read something to the effect that post-WWII, the British government decided the future was in three technologies: nuclear power, aviation, and computers. So they set out to make sure the UK took its rightful place as master of the future, slanting policy heavily towards those ideas. And wow, they were thr…

I'd be interested in seeing where you read that, because they absolutely failed to do anything useful about it almost all of the time. And at the expense of the rocket program too.

Dunno about the government, but ARM and Rolls Royce have certainly done very well in their given fields. Curiously they are parts suppliers, not whole product manufacturers.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#313

Post by c_r_e_a_m »

> If you're in the engineering, product, design, marketing, sort of the builder's side of that organization, you've got to know that you're creating a lot more value than that, possibly 10 times, maybe 100 times that value

Very dubious. From personal experience I'd guess that most non-sales employees at the big tech companies are actually creating negative value for the business (not contributing enough to profit to pay their comp and benefits). This mainly seems to happen for two reasons:

1. Career incentives for decision-makers (Eng. and PM management and directors) are almost totally disconnected from the profitability of the business. You can definitely become a superstar by building something wildly profitable, but that's the hard approach. The easier and more common approach is simple empire-building: Gather a larger and larger team, and have more projects and launches under you. The projects don't necessarily even need to intend to make or save money - you get to pick the metrics you target, and you can probably find some that indicate you're successful! The overall impact is mis-allocation of talent on a pretty grand scale.

2. On a more micro-scale (within teams), engineers are terrible at focusing on things that are good for the business. If you leave an engineering team alone, they will spend 90% of the time rewriting systems that already exist to make them simpler, easier to modify, etc. They will normally accomplish this! But the rewritten systems will do almost nothing to increase how much money the company makes, and it's rare that it will save enough resources to be worth it (engineers are expensive).

Both big tech companies I've worked at had what seemed like a relatively small set of teams focused on the core of the business, who were laser-focused on improving revenue or reducing the cost of core infrastructure used around the business. There were a much larger set of teams working on projects with less clear business value.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#314

Post by nullspace »

austenallred wrote: post #284
jarjoura wrote: post #221

For all the startup founders and VCs in this conversation, you are cheap motherf*ckers. When I read that engineers and employees prefer FAANG companies because they pay better, I want to remind you that it wasn't always like this. 10-15 years ago startups paid way better than big tech. Big Tech rewarded you by getting to specialize on problems and working at scale. The reason FB and Google pay well is because when th…

Google and FB were paying less when they were founded than most startups I see today, adjusted for inflation. The difference is that now Google and FB pay way more . More than startups could ever dream of competing with. Everyone I know at FB or Google is making $225k+, with the average/median being around $300k/yr. Absolutely no way new startups can play ball with those salaries, and FB/GOOG certainly weren’t paying…

> The difference is that now Google and FB pay way more. More than startups could ever dream of competing with.

Logically speaking, the only way that a company can pay more and still be profitable is if they produce value more efficiently. On a general, macro level.

So, if startup founders cannot even dream of providing either cash or equity (adjusted to risk) comparable to the big-techs, does this mean that startups are no longer the best way for society to become more productive?

I only see if two ways (again at the macro level)

a) Startups are better than BigTech for society economically: so make sure you hire the best-of-the-best, and give them high equity, and later compensation when you have more cash.

b) BigTech is better than startups for society economically: here, the proof is in the pudding, better hires leads to more profits, so hire the best of the best, and just give them mountains of cash.

I feel like we're seeing b) for the last 5 - 6 years.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#315

Post by garry »

Apocryphon wrote: post #200
garry wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a problem, no doubt.

And can VCs help address this problem?

I often encourage founders to be more generous with equity for recruits and early employee refresh grants. Care and feeding of the org also involves being thankful to the people who build the value.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#316

Post by ben_jones »

opportune wrote: post #269
jarjoura wrote: post #221

For all the startup founders and VCs in this conversation, you are cheap motherf*ckers. When I read that engineers and employees prefer FAANG companies because they pay better, I want to remind you that it wasn't always like this. 10-15 years ago startups paid way better than big tech. Big Tech rewarded you by getting to specialize on problems and working at scale. The reason FB and Google pay well is because when th…

Absolutely this. A lot of startups these days skimp by hiring sub-FAANG SWEs with less than 5 yoe, and it shows in their products. Lack of product maturity, bad engineering (worst horror story I’ve heard recently is Wayfair), resume driven development / over-engineering / cargo culting, huge teams to work on simple features. All so they can hire two middle-skill 22 year olds instead of a skilled 35 year old. If you’r…

Sub-FANNG SWEs? 250k+ or gtfo? I sincerely hope Google and it’s Ilk don’t represent the best of the best because that would mean the best of our indistry would be found severely wanting.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#317

Post by bilekas »

keithwhor wrote: post #90

The pessimism in this thread really bothers me. I’ve read anecdotes on entrepreneurship being on the decline, but it pains me to read so many negative takes on startups. We’re actively training our young people to avoid taking risks, and it’s going to fuck us — especially if some of those young people have the ambition be early employees at, say, a startup that takes on climate change in a big way. Look — the fact th…

Just based on your rebuttal, background knowledge and common sense alone, please write up an article, even if you only flesh out the points you made. I agree with as much as I can relate to, but the rest begs for more story!

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#318

Post by marcyb5st »

malisper wrote: post #157

If you want a good reason to not join Google in particular, Google does not train their managers. When I was interviewing with Google, I interviewed around 8 friends of mine that worked or previously worked at Google. Lack of management training was a something that every one of them brought up. Two of them had even been managers at Google and basically said "yeah, we weren't trained". The way it's been described to…

Googler here. I'm not sure when you interviewed or your friends worked at Google, but nowadays managers undergo some training (I can't tell you how thorough that is, because I didn't do it yet).

Also, right now, I believe the norm is to have managers and TLs as separate positions, even in small teams (like mine, 5 people in total).

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#319

Post by femto113 »

Now I personally can't stand to work for big companies, but it's definitely not because its a bad financial move. Might as well write a post about "downsides of not picking the right lottery numbers". I know more people who have retired young and comfortably from a career at Microsoft (or Google, or Amazon) than I do who have achieved wealth from startups (and I know plenty of both types here in Seattle). In every single case there was substantial risk and a big element of luck for the startups that succeeded, while those who worked for the big firms never once worried that their paycheck might bounce.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#320

Post by CydeWeys »

camelspade wrote: post #305
opportune wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely this. A lot of startups these days skimp by hiring sub-FAANG SWEs with less than 5 yoe, and it shows in their products. Lack of product maturity, bad engineering (worst horror story I’ve heard recently is Wayfair), resume driven development / over-engineering / cargo culting, huge teams to work on simple features. All so they can hire two middle-skill 22 year olds instead of a skilled 35 year old. If you’r…

Who/what is a “sub-FAANG SWE”? Are you suggesting software engineers who don’t work at one of the FAANG’s are subpar? Apologies if I’m misunderstanding.

I think it's more referring to compensation. If you're only offering half the pay of some of the alternatives, you're simply not going to get a shot at most of the highest-skilled job seekers. They will, sensibly, tend to go work for the highest-paying employers. Free market for labor and all that.
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