Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

The good: I get paid better than my last jobs. I can browse internal resources to satisfy my curiosity about how things work.

The bad: Basically no work gets done and there's no motivation to do any.

The dev tools, docs and tech debt impart such a slow iteration speed that even when I am working a full 8 hours, only a few very small changes get done, yet somehow this is even more than most of the rest of my team can muster during an entire week.

Because of this, 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. As far as I can tell, if I can be just barely the best on the team by doing there's nothing the company will offer me to work harder. If I get asked about why it takes long to make a simple change I can point to the environment and shrug my shoulders. Of course, it's possible the rest of the team is doing that too, but I have no way of knowing.

This amounts to a glacial development pace and when I look back at the progress made since I joined and estimate the cost to the company (salary, servers, etc) it's frankly disgusting. 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.

So my question is: Is all of FAANG like this? If the market value of such incompetence if FAANG salary, how can I do good work and get paid preportionally?

A lot of engineers at startups, like myself, want to work with talent that is skilled enough to get into FAANG bit too bored of the extremely glacial pace these companies work at.

On a more on topic note: I've heard about, and observed, similar behavior from friends of similar companies: doing very minimal work and being surprised at the massive rewards they get.

You can do good work at any company, but FAANGs especially will reward you with compensation and opportunities if you stand out.

What degree of tenure do other people on the team have? If old-timers aren't on the team, or worse, if they leave the team for others within the company, they might be seeing writing on the wall that you can't. If this is the case, your future on this team, and likely with this company, might be in jeopardy when the reorganization comes.

Is the team just not important? Are you responsible for maintenance of some cost center that isn't worth high-level executives paying any attention to? If this is the case, your future might also be in jeopardy, but the reorganization might be multiple years away.

Are you just not listening to your manager? It's possible that you are going to be "blindsided" by a PIP due to the lack of output. This might happen if the actual output of your team isn't what you are thinking it is. Maybe the engineers who aren't outputting anything visible to you are actually outputting considerably to other parts of the organization. If this is the case, your future is in jeopardy and you'll find yourself out of the company within a year or so (yes, it actually does take a long time to fire people at FAANG companies).

It could be one of these or something else. Since you have so much extra time, it might behoove you to figure out exactly what the situation is on your team, so you can make the necessary preparations (to change teams, to get a new job before you're laid off or fired, to do whatever you think is best).

I've heard rumors but wow