When I was working at a large corporate company I sometimes dreaded going to work for the same reasons you mentioned. The code was a mess from having a ton of developers touching it and them taking shortcuts to implement updates because learning the entire context and codebase to do it the right way would be take a very long time or they didn't have the motivation to bother. Working on a single Jira ticket would take days. The culture at the office was way too relaxed and seemed like people would kill time by playing ping pong or other activities until it was 5pm for them to check out for the day. Doing the bare minimum to get by was the norm culture there and the many layers of management there made it hard for people to get fired. I didn't find the job fulfilling since I wasn't learning anything new and felt like I wasn't contributing anything impactful. I quit and joined small smartups where the environment is more fast paced and you have to wear many different hats so you are always learning new things. In short, if you're not happy then start looking for new opportunities.
Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
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Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#32I'd just like to make a comment about human endeavour generally. It is a messy business, full of inefficiencies and strange quirks. Yet somehow, we still manage to invent amazing things across the planet.
What you are describing is certainly not unique to FAANG, and certainly not true for all FAANG (or anywhere). There will always be places where the pace is glacial, or getting work done is hard. There will be others where it is easier.
There will be times when you are struggling to get things done, even in a good environment. Life will not always be as simple as it was (children, life traumas, financial change, political instability, medical events, who knows). Other times, life will be easier and you will have time to wonder and plan on top of regular life.
The one constant is that you are often in charge of a certain amount of agency with regards to yourself and your own output. Why shrug your shoulders and do less in your current team? If the company will not offer things to you to 'work harder', why not just do it anyway if you are capable? Some people don't even have two hands! This is flippant but the point is: do not rely on solely external motivations to do brilliant things.
Counterpoint: Don't work yourself to death in a team or organisation that will not value your output. Do good things, and use them to move laterally (or elsewhere entirely) until you find a good fit. It probably won't be perfect - but flaws can bring benefit too, even if only as a balanced perspective.
Anyway, carry on and do well despite those around you acting as anchors or wet blankets. Find some colleagues in the lunch area that will act as sails, and be their sea breeze. Invest something great, or make small invisible improvements to many peoples lives (quite possible in a FAANG) and take heart that you did well for yourself, and not for some performance metric.
Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#33A lot of jobs at FAANG companies are there pursely so you're not working on competing with said FAANG company at a startup/other company.
Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#34Very curious about which FAANG this is. As an EM at "F", my experience is pretty much the opposite - everything moves at breakneck speed, driven by an impact-oriented culture and related incentives. A team like you're describing would get disbanded very quickly due to low productivity (unless of course you're all somehow saving/making the company millions of dollars with few lines of code).
Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#35>Because of this, I normally work about one day trickle out my changes during the the week. Sounds like the Change tool chain is way, WAY more efficient than my "20k+ employees corp but not FAANG" general career experience... Most places I've worked for (mostly mining/engineering) have a change process that takes 2-3 weeks to get something HURRIED through a change process. Maybe a non-technical role would suit you mo…
I remember this in the first place I worked at.
Damn that was bad. Lots of positives in how that huge company handle tech but speed was not one.
Since then I have only worked for startups. Everything is not rosy but we execute very quickly.
Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#36If your FAANG is Amazon, it gets better. When you first join, no one knows what you can do, so you get crap tasks. You show what you can do and you get better tasks. As you stay on a team for a little while, you start to notice small improvements that can be made, so you make a well thought out suggestion (or you just go and make it better). Over time your tasks become projects. You understand the goals for your team so you make your own tasks. Eventually the projects you are assigned are so large that you have to delegate tasks to your colleagues who don't have the experience yet.
If you have the patience and willingness to build that trust and go down that path, FAANG will be rewarding. If it feels slow and frustrating, then it might not be a good fit. You could bounce around to different orgs hoping to find a domain that excites you, or you can coast for 4 years until your RSUs run out. I'd say it's better to find an organization or company that gets you excited. Just my two cents.
Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#37Good growing startups is the best place on every aspects. 1. Not too much load since it's growing and has resource scarcity so won't push harder on employees. 2. Not less work since it's growing and there's ample work to do for next year atleast next few months. 3. You own stuff. 4. You get paid good. Equivalent to how much you work and that keeps you going. Even you can negotiate freely on this in case you have any…
This has been my experience as well. The best places to work are where they actually have a lot of interesting problems to solve and work to be done in order to grow and be profitable.
A lot of companies are not doing that, and in many cases developer hiring and team management is more driven by things like internal company politics, or the desire to use a hiring budget by the end of the year for example.
Also it is sometimes the case that an organization's software development needs are not persistent. Sometimes there are weeks or even months where the bottleneck of the company is far from software development, and until those problems are figured out there's little for the developers to do, but they're on a salary so they have to come in and do their hours anyway. That can be awkward to talk about when those developers are being paid up to a half a million dollars per year.
Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#38I work at VMWare and I am pleasantly surprised it is not at all like that. Join VMWare's core team ;)
Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#39I'd just like to make a comment about human endeavour generally. It is a messy business, full of inefficiencies and strange quirks. Yet somehow, we still manage to invent amazing things across the planet. What you are describing is certainly not unique to FAANG, and certainly not true for all FAANG (or anywhere). There will always be places where the pace is glacial, or getting work done is hard. There will be others…
It sounds a lot like where I work and that's not a faang - it just seems to be the default setting for large software organisations.
Sucks to be on the inside though and stressful if you care about doing good productive work.
Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?
#40Given the description I assume you worked at Amazon. I worked there too, and I quit for Google.
They are VERY different companies. Google's tooling is unparalleled and maintained by staffed teams, its work force is motivated. It's hard to move the needle - in a large company full of smart people all the easy stuff was done ten years ago, and compliance concerns are everywhere. But none of that is due to lack of tools or motivation.
Google is an engineering company. Amazon is a store that hires engineers because it has no other option.
You seem to be at exactly the point where I was when I left. Yes, the grass is greener on the other side. Do it.