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Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

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Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#341

Post by granshaw »

ninkendo wrote: post #170
oliv__ wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't see how a life could be fulfilling if you hate or even just don't care for what you spend most of your time on (work)

You're not always in control of whether your job is fulfilling. Maybe you've been lucky so far, but it's unlikely to last forever. A piece of advice: The moment it stops being fulfilling for you, you may get the urge to change jobs to something that you think will make you happier. You may change jobs several times trying to rediscover that initial feeling that made you satisfied with your work. But it may never come…

How about trying to get back into that first job? ;)

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#342

Post by moron4hire »

ninkendo wrote: post #170
oliv__ wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't see how a life could be fulfilling if you hate or even just don't care for what you spend most of your time on (work)

You're not always in control of whether your job is fulfilling. Maybe you've been lucky so far, but it's unlikely to last forever. A piece of advice: The moment it stops being fulfilling for you, you may get the urge to change jobs to something that you think will make you happier. You may change jobs several times trying to rediscover that initial feeling that made you satisfied with your work. But it may never come…

I think it's important to figure out why you found some piece of work fulfilling. I think a lot of people don't have a good understanding of why they like doing the things they do.

I know a lot of people who say, "I do this job that I hate, and I have this other hobby that I truly love, but if I were to make my hobby my job, I think I'd learn to hate my hobby." I used to say it about a number of things. I love to cook, or I love to paint, or whatever, but I work as a programmer because it's what I can stand to do for work.

And then one day I had gotten so sick of working for terrible companies that I thought I couldn't be a programmer anymore. Then I spent about a year kicking around a bunch of bullshit ideas, trying to find work that wasn't programming, that was "more fulfilling". And ultimately ended up doing a lot of programming in that time, because I had falsely concluded that my terrible work experiences were just "the nature" of working as a programmer.

I didn't hate programming. I hated working for consulting companies ran by MBAs. What I eventually realized was that I love programming. If I had been a graphic designer in those same situations, it would have made life even worse. Programming itself was the thing that I was enjoying that mollified my discontent with my employment situation. Any other job would not have been as satisfying as programming, which is where the concept that I'd "learn to hate" photography or music or teaching or whatever.

Some people I know do the work because they love solving problems for their users. Some people do it because they love learning new things all the time. But I don't think they really know that about themselves. I think they have a surface understanding that, somewhere around this area of this job that I'm doing, there is something here that I like. But they don't have their thumb on what part, exactly, that they like.

I think it's very important to pin it down because I also think it's very important to be able to recognize if it is no longer the thing you love. It's perfectly valid to change your mind about what you love. You might start out on your career loving the intellectual challenge of programming, and you might learn over time that you love interfacing with users even more. But if you haven't taken the time to deeply introspect on what particular aspect of the work it is that you are enjoying, you'll lump it all together as "I love software development", and then wonder why things have gotten bad when you're still a software developer but are now working on database schemas rather than requirements gathering.

You can't know how to fix a thing if you don't know how it's broken. And you can't know it's broken if you don't know what it should look like when its fixed.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#343

Post by ghaff »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #292
oliv__ wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoy doing what I do. I think it's possible to combine financial success with personal satisfaction. In fact I believe the greatest financial successes are the ones that are most intimately tied to their creator's personal satisfaction, enjoyment and alignment with what they do

You don’t need the money. You’ve been given the financial freedom to do whatever you want. And you seriously will just plug away at your job? You can’t think of a better way to spend your time and talents? That’s a bit sad.

I think you're projecting. I suppose in normal times I'd take more time off but otherwise I'm not sure I would quit and do something different. Admittedly lots of people get addicted to effectively the gamification aspects of compensation but there are still lots of people in tech and elsewhere that could absolutely retire comfortably and/or do whatever they wanted at a relatively young age if they wanted to.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#344

Post by saalweachter »

danjac wrote: post #321
saalweachter wrote: post #167

So the only answer I can give you is "maybe?" because I don't really know how all FAAMGs operate and I don't know exactly how much productivity you are actually seeing. I will say a megacorp feels much less productive than a startup, because of the amount of overhead involved. Meetings on product design, meetings to coordinate development, meetings to talk about how many meetings we have, a month spent writing perf r…

> Meetings on product design, meetings to coordinate development, meetings to talk about how many meetings we have, a month spent writing perf reviews, launch processes that require buy in from three different PAs to change the color of a widget. This starts to happen to small and medium sized companies once they start hiring from the megacorps.

Yeah, the worst thing of all is when you have a small company that doesn't actually need that much coordination overhead aping it from the larger companies. Spending 2 hours a day in meetings and complicated performance calibration processes is an unfortunate necessity of working with a few thousand other people; you eat the cost because it's the only way to actually get thousands of person-years of useful work done each year.

But if you're a 10-100 person company and most people are spending 25-50% of their workday on coordination and process, you're probably paying the same cost for no actual gain.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#345

Post by throwaway9191a »

Kapura wrote: post #306

>If the market value of such incompetence if FAANG salary, how can I do good work and get paid preportionally? You're going to have to learn that, as a laborer at a firm, the quality of work you do is, at best, loosely correlated to your monetary compensation. Sometimes you can do good work, sometimes you can do bad work, but how much you're paid is going to depend greatly on a number of surrounding factors. So, acce…

> You're going to have to learn that, as a laborer at a firm, the quality of work you do is, at best, loosely correlated to your monetary compensation. Sometimes you can do good work, sometimes you can do bad work, but how much you're paid is going to depend greatly on a number of surrounding factors.

This is really good advice. Your organization is given tens of millions of dollars to meet a set of goals. Those goals take X SDEs to accomplish. SDEs get paid roughly the same amount, regardless of their day to day.

At some point you will be in crunch mode on a highly visible project. Other times you will be updating wikis or doing things that don't need an SDE (I spend a lot of time getting paid as an SDE to work on tech documentation). The later are great times to do something you find interesting (maybe even loosely correlated with your org).

If you are an enjoyable person who can get things done, you are well worth the money. (except at amazon where the first part is frustratingly optional :)

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#346

Post by khazhoux »

This thread is seriously in need of some tough love.

@faang0722, you're being a slacker, and not doing right by either your company or yourself.

You're at one of the top companies in the world, and are safe from the jobs disaster that's gripping the entire country. Millions of people are desperate to receive $600-1600 from the government this month because they are unable to work. Millions are putting on shitty facemasks and still showing up to work at grocery stores and warehouses and wherever, risking disease because they have no other choice. Meanwhile you can't be bothered to work at home on your laptop more than one day a week, because the build system and tech debt makes you sad?

You say the company is evidently pleased with your work and that may be true, but now you're part of the problem. You think the company tolerates shitty work, so you've decided to tolerate shitty work. Don't.

Since you don't think what you're doing is ethically wrong, have you told your manager that the work assigned to you is so simple that you only actually work one day a week? Of course not.

So either start putting in your best work, or switch teams or company and see if it suits you better... or else accept that you're being a freeloader and pretending to do more work than you really are.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#347

Post by smattiso »

Source: Worked at 3 different FAANGs for nearly 10 years.

What you are describing exists in almost every big company. I assume that you are working on a mature product with a big code base. In these projects the pace of development is slow and the changes are typically small and incremental. Engineers tend to get burnt out as building anything requires an egregious amount of back and forth with PMs, TPMs, QE, etc. As a result probably 90% of the engineers are not motivated to build anything instead optimize for reaching the next level (L5 L6 etc) and payday.

I came to the same conclusion as you and ended up quitting. However if you want to stay there is another path.

Like I said 90% of the people you are working with are burnt out and their work is boring, but 10% are legit engineers building the future. They might not be working on your team, or your product, or even your org, but they are there. If you can collaborate with these people you will find your work 1000x more enjoyable and these are the type of people who will go on to do great things. You can be one of them and this will carry you on to bigger and better things as your career goes on.

First you need to prove yourself to your own team as someone who can get things done and isn't a wimp. This can take as little as a few months. After that look around your own product and org for something that you would be totally stoked to work on. Maybe this is an inventive product idea you came up with, maybe its something a secret team is building, who knows? Start reaching out to your manager and people on that project and offer your services. Start small build an integration with some other product, fix a few bugs, etc. Be nosy into what is happening within your company, stay upbeat, and be willing to step in and be the man. If you have that attitude and can keep your passion going you can get to those rare higher levels of the engineering profession. If you check out of your job and stay depressed you can make a living for a while but you will stay where you are. It is what you make of it, and if your company or your manager won't let you progress in the way you want, you can always quit. Don't stick around for years doing the same old BS, and don't let your career be controlled by your manager, but there is another way. That being said if you are young and a new grad it will be much more difficult until you have proven yourself over a few years.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#348

Post by dev-ns8 »

moron4hire wrote: post #147
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you telling me that if you had the financial freedom to work on any project you wanted, you’d choose what you’re doing right now?

I'm not there person you replied to, but I think I would probably stay at my current job if I was financially independent. I work for a small company. The company does foreign language training. Most of the business is one-on-one classes between real teachers and students. My job is basically R&D to figure out ways we might use software to improve the teaching/leaning process. My primary focus is on virtual reality,…

This is awesome man, truly happy for ya.

Your comment isn't the first time I have heard this advice, "Find a small non tech company and get involved" however I have previously written this advice off for w/e reason.

I now find myself in search of a new opportunity and am very much like many other commenters in this thread, highly unsatisfied with "rat race" type jobs, and if I'm not happy I don't perform up to my ability well.

I'm actually very interested in exploring your path, possibility finding a small non tech company and seeing where/ if I could add value to their organization with my software development experience.

All my previous jobs have been found via standard software development job boards though, StackOverflow, LinkedIn, homegrown software job boards, etc. Do you have any advice on finding a small non tech company that might be looking to add a software developer to their ranks?

Honestly I'd love to chat with ya personally. If you're comfortable shoot me an email otherwise any incite here would be wonderful. Email in my Bio

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#349

Post by whoisjuan »

Kapura wrote: post #306

>If the market value of such incompetence if FAANG salary, how can I do good work and get paid preportionally? You're going to have to learn that, as a laborer at a firm, the quality of work you do is, at best, loosely correlated to your monetary compensation. Sometimes you can do good work, sometimes you can do bad work, but how much you're paid is going to depend greatly on a number of surrounding factors. So, acce…

This is the fallacy of modern tech-based capitalism and I hate it. The job that I enjoyed the least and where I also did the least amount of work was the best salary I ever had. The value that I added through that job was nominal at best.

Other jobs that paid less felt more challenging and exponentially more interesting. Needless to say that happiness was proportional as well.

I came to terms with the idea of lowering my salary just to have more impact and work in interesting things in cultures that I enjoy. But there's something that feels so wrong about it. Imagine a Corolla being more expensive than a Mercedes C Class. This is the equivalent to that but in the opposite side on the equation.

It doesn't make sense but there's probably little you can do about it. Big tech companies ruined the job market. Not because they pay well, but because they pay too well for mediocre IC and Manager positions that barely move the needle.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#350

Post by x87678r »

ransom1538 wrote: post #75

I remember talking to a senior person at FB (wears a suit on friday). I asked "how is hiring?". Their response: terrible. People like this OP game systems, know how to test, understands what the boss wants, know ahead of time the questions they will be asked, etc. They have gamed the entire system. So! They tend to get through the interview with ease. The problem is... now what. What is the next thing they need to ga…

If you look at leetcode style interviews this is pretty much exactly how I'd expect it to end up. FB probably is worst as most people would only go there for the money.
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