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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?

#531

Post by khazhoux »

ryandrake wrote: post #511
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…

I think the point is that OP is short-changing his/her own career. If you're doing the equivalent of 1 day of work over 5 days, and it's OK to your manager, you are performing at what most FAANG companies would call "Meets Expectations" which is just treading water career-wise. If your goal is to just tread water for the rest of your life and take a paycheck, then by all means keep doing it. If your career goals incl…

> If you're doing the equivalent of 1 day of work over 5 days, and it's OK to your manager

As developers, we want our managers to trust us. We don't want managers to micro- us and question our time estimates. If I say doing some task will take X weeks, I don't want management to say "do it faster". The manager doesn't know the technical details and complications like the developer does.

Here, OP is explicitly abusing that trust, taking most of the week off but pretending to be working. He/she is meeting expectations by misrepresenting the complexity and difficulty of the work.

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

#532

Post by codeviking »

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…

I think you're referring to "gatekeeping." If the employee, for instance, proactively fixes a bug or resolves some technical debt, it's possible another team member might try to prevent it from being merged. Their reasons might seem non-objective and rooted more in the fact that they weren't involved in the change, or involved in the decision to make the change. I've ran into this.

It's easy to be discouraged and, in the event this occurs, stop trying. That said I think this is the wrong thing to do. Instead I view this type of scenario as a chance to convince my teammate of the value I'm adding and the rationale behind the change being made without being explicitly planned. It's hard work, and sometimes involves some long, strained conversations with your team mates. That said at the end of the day you just might encourage that individual to proactively solve these types of problems. This will probably make that person happier as well, and unlock additional productivity for your team.

The hardest part of software is the people part :)

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

#533

Post by tk75x »

csunbird wrote: post #437
defnotashton2 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea I walk anytime I sit across from a manager and they say our corporate raise limit is x. Its terribly discouraging and makes me want to burn the building down. I should be paid for a portion of the value I'm adding to the company. If I wrote software in 3 months that billed out over 500k every 12 months, I expect a substantial raise or bonus not 3,5, 10%..

I actually disagree with this. In big companies, everybody completes a piece of the puzzle and if you are the one who collects all the pieces, you might think that you are doing the most of the work. But actually, everybody is a part of that. Let me give you an example: My $JOB at $COMPANY is related to preventing fraud. My department and team saves around 4 to 10 percent of the ALL revenue, potentially more if we di…

It's called a corporation to describe a collection of resources into one body (corp). Latin(?) roots.

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

#534

Post by giantg2 »

awinder wrote: post #491
giantg2 wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_…

They will pay for AWS certs (contract price goes down as certs in org go up) and a few others, but you have to do it on your own time, which is fair.

I guess the better way to put it is: would you assign Tableau work to someone who has no training or experience in it and then tell them they are taking too long? The only way to do it is to learn it as you go, which is going to be slower than someone who is trained. I really want to become an expert in something useful/marketable like AWS and Python, but these no-value assignments are throwing a wrench in that.

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

#535

Post by Delk »

ghaff wrote: post #433
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?

In general, I certainly wouldn't advocate trying to do the least work possible to get by in some job long-term. It doesn't sound fulfilling and likely isn't good for one's career long-term. But I don't get this moralizing about cheating the company.

Especially since OP already indicated that they're feeling unmotivated.

If you're feeling unmotivated and force yourself to work harder on something that doesn't motivate you to fulfill some kind of a moral standard, that might end up being a fast track to burnout. (Depending on the exact circumstances, your personality etc. of course, but burnout doesn't only happen because of too much work but also because of bad matches between people and their jobs.)

The key is to see if there's some way OP can find the motivation, and then work harder on getting more things done because they have the motivation to. Or to find some other kind of a solution to the unsatisfying situation.

I don't really get the moralizing about other people having to work in objectively worse conditions either. It's not like OP's (or anybody else's) mental well-being and satisfaction with something that doesn't appear to suit their personality should magically become better because someone else has bigger trouble.

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

#536

Post by khazhoux »

minimuffins wrote: post #507
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…

This is nuts. This guy doesn't owe the maximally extractive amount of his labor to the FAANGCorp. If they're happy with his work output, fine. He fulfilled his end of the bargain. Totally deranged protestant work ethic run amok to think otherwise. It's also extremely not this guy's fault other people have to work exploitative shit jobs during a pandemic, and his working harder (for FAANG!) isn't the thing that will f…

> If they're happy with his work output, fine. He fulfilled his end of the bargain. Totally deranged protestant work ethic run amok to think otherwise.

By this reasoning...

Manager: Our users are asking for this feature, how long will it take us to ship it?

Developer: I can do it in six weeks.

Manager: Ok, I'll let them know.

(Six weeks later)

Manager: I just found out that this was actually super simple for you and only took a few days. What were you actually doing the last month? Our users were waiting this whole time.

Developer: You said you were OK with six weeks! Your protestant work ethic is deranged!

;-)

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

#537

Post by bumby »

allenu wrote: post #510
paloaltokid wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having done transformation work for the last 4 years I can tell you...the individual employee will almost certainly literally die of exhaustion before they see meaningful change.

Yup. I haven't done that type of work, but I feel like to make change at a large company you need to be okay with imperfection all around you first and then find one or two things that could actually make a huge impact. Trying to fix little things here and there is just an exercise in futility.

I can commiserate with this attitude but still find myself disagreeing. I have worked in the type of role where I was expected to lead a transformational change when it seems like the incentives at every level are aligned against it.

I do personally feel an obligation to keep trying because if I didn't I'm not doing my job. Throwing up my hands in exasperation means I'm collecting a pay check just to keep the status quo. That makes me part of the problem as well as resigning myself to be miserable. I think we owe it to ourselves and the organization to move on if we get to that point.

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

#538

Post by anxrn »

smattiso wrote: post #363
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…

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 and op might be more violently in agreement than you might have surmised.

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

#539

Post by walshemj »

codeviking wrote: post #421
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…

This seems like good advice, but is presented poorly. You're meeting expectations, which is great, but don't stop there. You recognize that you (and your teammates) could be doing more, so make it happen. You're entirely capable and empowered to do so: - Fix that technical debt. - Identify better tooling and demonstrate it's value to your teammates. - Proactively find things your software could do better and write ab…

The OP is of course the new guy/gal so your not going to being doing major things from day 1.

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

#540

Post by rmrfstar »

bumby wrote: post #474
cvlasdkv wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming that FAANG companies are offering "fair" compensation for the output of their engineers. How would anyone ever make a profit doing that? Employees are very rarely the exploiters and almost always the exploited.

If it wasn’t fair, why did you accept the offer? Let’s not pretend that FAANG employees are like an underclass that has to accept a job out of desperation.

> Let’s not pretend that FAANG employees are like an underclass

Depends on your baseline.

If you use other workers in the US, then you are correct.

If you use a counterfactual in which employees meaningfully participate in corporate governance, then you are incorrect.

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