Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this? • Hacker News Board

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

#441

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

zffr wrote: post #339

abhv wrote: post #111

At apple, you cannot browse internal resources. At fb and google, it is called SWE instead of SDE. Amazon has SDEs. (perhaps netflix too?) Although you might be smart enough to know that and misdirect. Even at the best universities, best tech companies, best startups, you will find pools of miserable and unmotivated people. Don't get stuck. There are brilliant people everywhere and certainly at faang. Find them, lear…

I know engineers at Apple and they have full access to the source for almost any project.

[deleted]

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

#442

Post by qntty » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

cameronbrown wrote: post #417

newen wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's with this moralizing? If you can get away with working only one day a week, there's nothing wrong with doing exactly that. Is this like some Protestant work ethic thing?

It's also possible that this one day of intense work is unsustainable for 5 days, and this is just their working style. There's nothing wrong with that as long as this isn't done out of laziness.

So what if it's done out of laziness? There's no law that says that a lazy person can't participate in the economy without giving up their laziness. There are jobs out there that are well suited for lazy people. Maybe OP has found one of them.

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

#443

Post by doonesbury » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

Welcome to corporate work! There are many factors that heavily if not swamp the technical aspects of the work. If you're not happy you have to make some noise with your boss, transfer, or quit. You're gonna have to take action. Human organizations are too complex to succumb to easy generalizations like all faang companies are like this ... That's no help to you or anyone else.

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

#444

Post by enumjorge » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

qntty wrote: post #372

khazhoux wrote: post #346

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 facem…

AKA, please work harder for your corporate masters because poor people are suffering. What's that? You want your corporate masters to pay a fair share of tax so poor will suffer less? No, just work harder and that extra work won't benefit people who need it.

To be fair it’s the OP who’s implying he or she wants to do more. Its not about working harder to please your corporate masters but about taking action to improve your own happiness.

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

#445

Post by mylons » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #346

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 facem…

you’re right if the person was not working at a FAANG. so what if they’re one of tnt most valuable companies in the world? one way they became so valuable is by vacuuming up all the talent and giving them tedious work to do so they don’t compete with FAANG itself.

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

#446

Post by unethical_ban » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #405

unethical_ban wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder your background. Do you know how demoralizing it is to work in an organization where the people trying to lead have no power to effect change, and the leaders are incompetent and force bad decisions on a constant basis? Where there is no real vision for the company? The OP is describing being trapped in a tar pit, and you're saying "run faster".

He's not describing a tar pit, though. He says he works one day a week -- he could , in fact, be running faster. The simplest thing to do would be to sign up for more tasks (his calendar is open, after all) and/or tell his manager he wants more challenging work.

"Hey boss, I'd like to move faster on Project X, but there are too many review processes"

That's just the way it is, John.

"Hey, I'd like to change the change review process to streamline it from a catch-all form, to one more appropriate to our workflow"

Sorry John, QA will never sign off.

"Hey, why are we wasting 30% of our team on Project Z? It's a total duplication of work for Project Y, and brings no value to the company - it's the pet of that VP of finance, because he ate dinner with an Azure rep three months ago."

Man, I hear ya, John. What a stupid project. But that VP has the ear of the Board.

"Hey, I'd like to work my way into a design role, to help craft more common-sense engineering and be at the table when we talk about backlog priorities"

Let's put that in your development plan for 2022. We need to knock out Project X.

---

Working at large companies can be soul sucking. There is a comic called "Dilbert" that touches on it.

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

#447

Post by didibus » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

tmyrden wrote: post #436

didibus wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, they didn't say they're working one day a week, they said it takes them only one day to provide equal value to what their teammates achieve in one week, a value that seems to meet their company's expectations. FAANGS employees are salaried, and not paid by hour, because you are compensated for ROI. If it takes you one hour and you bring in lots of value, that's still a good deal. On the flip side, you cou…

> 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. They said exactly that though. They work one day a week and otherwise just log on for standup and when messaged.

Ya that's why I still agree mostly with OP in this particular case it seems something is off.

I just wanted to explain that with software, a small effort can deliver huge returns. So the idiom of: "Don't work hard, work smart" is in full effect. If you can deliver on the expected business value with less effort on your part it is still a win/win scenario. A business who'd replace you for someone who fills up all 40 hours would not necessarily gain anything, in fact, might lose on ROI. Hours put into software does not translate directly into the output delivered.

And, there's only so much creative juice per week you can deliver on, so that cleverness of solutions you can come up with, and those good ideas you have which don't take very long to implement, but deliver big returns, you can't necessarily just be asked to come up with them twice as often by working more hours either. In fact, sometimes those come by taking a break, a step back, getting more rest, etc.

And maybe since we're on the topic, I've had a fare share of jobs prior, server, construction, military, and yet nothing drains me more than software engineering at the end of the day, even if it was only a 6 hour day. There's something about just thinking all day and discussing heavily all day that is super draining mentally. Where other jobs I've had that were more physically demanding tired me, but in a good way, that almost energized me in my off time. The mental work is hard.

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

#448

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#449

Post by Godel_unicode » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #426

Godel_unicode wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a subtly different take on this; op is cheating themselves. They work in a field famous for people deriving immense satisfaction from their job, but they aren't because they are living down to the expectations of others.

Seriously? I don't know anyone in this field who derives immense satisfaction from their job. Maybe if they're less than 5 years out of school and reality still hasn't hit yet...

I think you might be in a bubble of evil, I know tons of people who love their programming jobs.

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

#450

Post by goldenManatee » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #346

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 facem…

It’s a transaction. The goals of the company and employee parties is to maximize their own gains with as little effort as possible. The moral imperative argument is very dubious, and sounds one-side to further the gains of the company party at the expense of additional energy from the employee. Raising matters of social change as if the employee should have some gut wrenching “come to Jesus” because “they’re so lucky” relative to global social and market changes is a bunch of smoke and mirrors to, again, unevenly place the gains from the employee-business relationship on the company. Business is only a transaction; maximize gains for minimal effort, between all parties.

That “million people would kill for a chance” to be at a FAANG is not the employee’s problem anymore. The moment the company extended the job offer already created “a million” job applicants who didn’t get an offer. Behaving in a way that suggests continually begging “to stay in” just to get to create the net gains for other people, the investors and top management, deserves a therapy session on personal self-worth, which is a personal problem not a business matter.

Now, as for the matter of personally going above and beyond, that’s actually a separate matter - no need for emotional entanglement of the the business reality and personal reality. If the employee wishes, as they’ve expressed, to go above what is satisfying the business (given they’ve reported no management has complained) then by all means, find more work with outside teams within the company, tactfully speak to the manager about the concern, or just leave and start a new job or venture.

The moral guilt argument over the transactional relationship between an employee and the business, though, is at best naive, and at worse unevenly extracting more energy from the employee than the business. If the company has continued to pay the employee without complain, that’s their own moral dilemma for allowing it.