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

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

#491

Post by awinder » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #439

awinder wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feeling like you're not doing well at something is a key motivator towards growth & getting better. And yet through growth you have to grapple with the truth -- you're not doing as well at something as you could be. Some days I really struggle because the more you're growing the more you'll deal with intrusive thoughts that originate in that growth. Like you said -- keep going :).

Yeah, I'm familiar with the pyramid/staircase of mastery and the inertia period as it pertains to intrusive thoughts. I like to learn new things, struggle (within reason), and iterate on my previous attempts or prototypes to build a better product that I can be proud of. I did this when I was building my android apps and loved it. My problem is that the company sets us up for failure and doesn't even realize it. The…

I've gotta read up on the staircase of mastery cause I am not familiar :D

When you say self-teaching you mean you're paying for certs/doing on your own time? Or work is paying on one hand but going out after it isn't seen as valuable on the other? I'm just curious but by no means am I saying that there's not just bad situations to get out of, just that discomfort and feeling like you're not doing well aren't _solely_ reasons to leave. Hope your situation improves though, sounds like you're doing the work.

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

#492

Post by nuclear_eclipse » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #461

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.

> They work in a field famous for people deriving immense satisfaction from their job Do they? Not saying you're wrong, I'm really asking. It's not my perception that FAANG software devs have high satisfaction--more often the impression I have from talking to FAANG devs is that they feel trapped in golden handcuffs. But I'm open to the possibility that someone has better evidence than me.

It can vary highly from one half to the next, and changes with your teams, projects, etc. It can be extraordinarily rewarding to work on products that everyone you know uses every day. It can also be very frustrating and demoralizing to work on important components of the stack that noone inside or outside the company ever notices unless it breaks. The golden handcuffs are real, but most of FAANG gives you ample opportunity to switch teams and projects to find something to work on something that interests you, fulfills you, or lets you learn something that traditional companies would never let you work on unless you already had "industry experience". If you are proactive–and are "meeting expectations" in your current position–you almost certainly have the freedom to find something new whenever you start to get bored.

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

#493

Post by paulcole » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #386

qntty wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, he should work harder -- he admits to working only one day a week, and then actively pretends (by "trickling out" work) that it took longer. Let's please not pretend that it's normal or OK to have 6-day weekends every single week. He is being compensated (I infer) very well for a safe and comfortable job, except he doesn't like the tooling and he's realized that people trust him and he doesn't need to be honest…

It is absolutely 1000000000% "OK to have 6-day weekends every single week" if you can swing it.

Why the hell wouldn't it be?

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

#494

Post by abridgett » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

throwawaybbqed wrote: post #336

CGamesPlay wrote: post #7

It's possible that your or your team's productivity is actually bad, and in general at the company you are expected to do more, but the team you are on is a puddle of low productivity within the overall org. How would you know if this is the case? There are a few signs. 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 comp…

These are very good points. I'm curious what the process is from the perspective of the manager. I'm new at the management side of things and was always a top performer as an IC (so didn't get a chance to learn how its down on the flip side). My biggest challenge is figuring out how to give negative feedback (and not destroy a weak player's morale). If someone is having not performing well, I act as a cheerleader and…

Some companies have "competency matrixes" (or "growth matrixes") which show what's expected at each level. These can be helpful - showing that whilst a Junior person might just be expected to fix a bug, a more senior person may actively seek similar bugs, add test-cases etc. This is great at setting the scene as "how to level up" rather than of negative feedback.

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

#495

Post by maerF0x0 » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

> 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.

It took some discipline but I've started to spend any painful wait times to either do additional work (other repo, next commit, other branch, etc). Or to work on performance of the system that is slow (parallelizing tasks, bulk insertion of test fixtures, cached results so we only rerun invalidated portions etc)_

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

#496

Post by nuclear_eclipse » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

skrtskrt wrote: post #485

mkoubaa wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the FAANGs block personal projects from staff who are productive enough in their primary responsibility

What if the "personal" project is like "introduce this new tooling to the team, get it integrated into our CI pipeline"? Anything that introduces new technology or has the potential to require some time from other teams (Devops, SRE) I can see running into organizational roadblocks in the final stages of the project, even if the individual is free to start the experimentation and justification steps them on their own…

If they're willing to do the integration and support work on their own, then it shouldn't be a roadblock, and they should be able to prove the impact that it offers to other engineers and be rewarded if they did all of the work.

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

#497

Post by geggam » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

SaltyBackendGuy wrote: post #392

smattiso wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't listen to this guy. You don't have to change your own identity and your own personal compass to fit your company. You also don't have to succumb to the "starving Ethiopians" fallacy and take whatever crap job is given. This life has a billion paths you can take. Understand the tradeoffs and make a calculated decision but follow your own path. Granted you may end up homeless. But from experience there are way mo…

> You also don't have to succumb to the "starving Ethiopians" fallacy and take whatever crap job is given Just opinion so feel free to downvote to oblivion. It's hard for me personally to rationalize their position as a 'crap job' (as I have had really crappy jobs in my life - see US Army). Maybe op's take is a little brash, however, there's some perspective to be drawn from the comment. Agree with your sentiment tho…

US Army ranked about middle of the road as far as crap jobs went for me. ( MOS 19D )

Very MOS dependent and POGs tend to have a good time in the military

IT really is the top of the food chain, if you can handle stress, for employee type positions.

Try some farming, concrete work or other manual labor if you want to experience shit jobs

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

#498

Post by allenu » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

unethical_ban wrote: post #446

khazhoux wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is exactly how it goes and it's clear you've worked at a large company.

At the end of the day you have to accept that, yes, you are a cog in a machine. You have to morally reckon with the fact that the company is making millions or billions of dollars and sometimes you're not giving 100% of your mental effort because there's a lot of bureaucratic crap in the way. That's how it is. You either accept that and make peace or leave and go to a small company and try to make an impact that way (with way less pay).

Being super efficient at your job is not a "moral goal" when working at a big company. It's too big and complicated to draw clear lines about what is right and what is wrong when doing your work there. Even if you become more efficient at your job and make better product, often the thing holding back your product is something else entirely. You could improve the product by 1% by working harder but maybe your marketing department sucks or your senior leadership doesn't know what they're doing. The people in those positions could make different decisions and make your product 5x better, so it doesn't even matter.

Work long enough at a big company and you realize even if you do a bang up job, it won't make a huge difference in most cases. (Sometimes the product you're working on gets cancelled or fails in the market, so what was the point of stressing anyway??)

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

#499

Post by geggam » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #478

icedchai wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Stop working for large companies then. Large companies always have politics getting in the way of engineering decisions, resulting in annoyed engineers who can't do satisfying work. Small organisations have less politics, more creative freedom (usually) and you can have a larger impact on the organisation. However, they usually pay less, too. If your main priority is money then you might have to suck up the misery.

Work is not really something I have come to identify myself with. Its a way to make money so I can do the things I enjoy.

Trying to work at something you enjoy has always been the path to not enjoying that which you used to, for me anyway.

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

#500

Post by Lammy » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

awinder wrote: post #266

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…

Hysterically this usually "turns" for a company right around the point where someone successfully pitches they really need someone coming to the office in a suit on a Friday to signal seriousness.

Formal Friday was a very loose excuse for a happy hour, I assure you :)