Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful

The first piece is that mobility is high between teams at almost every FAANG company. At my first one, I moved 3 months later because the initial team wasn't a great fit for me maintaining a lot of slow moving legacy systems. I moved to a team working on much more greenfield projects with more attention on the products themselves, and I thrived for several years. See what your options are to talk to other teams and move to one that aligns better with what you want to work on.

The other related piece to this is that because mobility is so high, there do tend to be certain teams or areas with higher turnover and lower quality hires in some cases. No one wants to work on hard to maintain and neglected products, most good engineers that start there move on, and so it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.

There are likely some extremely brilliant people to learn from at the company (even if not in your team), so try to seek out and find them in teams with openings. I agree it's easier to move after a year, but if the fit is really not right you can likely get an exception going to a team with an understanding manager (who you would enjoy working for anyways). Set up some non-formal meetings based on the internal job board and be open with all these experiences and concerns.

Finally, the internal toolset is a real challenge, but I've come to take a slightly less pessimistic view on it. First off, the internal tooling tends to be worse on an individual workflow level, but accepting it has largely been better for me than fighting it (in most but not all cases). It's slower than a modern toolset, but still usually productive once you embrace what it's good at. The flip side is there are usually good reasons it's evolved to where it is today. Some of these reasons have to do with the scale of how many teams are working together, and understanding that will help explain why it is what it is. The other reasons are just that some of these companies have now been around a long time, and shifting to something better would be quite painful organizationally, meaning it's not ideal but the alternative would also be painful for the organization at a whole. You're new to it, so are at the opposite end of that.

I was fortunate enough to work in an environment, where I was the "below-average IQ person," and I am not below-average, but I worked with some fairly smart cookies.

I know that some of my co-workers looked at me with disdain; but I was honored that most did not.

Working with frustrating people has been a very useful part of my career. As a manager, I had to make life-changing decisions for employees, and it was important for me to be empirical in my decision-making.

It appears that working for FAANGs is a "mark of distinction," these days. I know they pay ridiculous salaries. I'm pretty much aware of the working environment, and don't find the prospect enticing.

In NY, I know many, many folks that worked in the finance industry as brokers and traders. They got their licenses, and made a whole boatload of money in a few short years, while absolutely destroying their mental and physical health.

They then left, when they couldn't stand it anymore, and used the money they made to start companies, doing the things they liked doing.

Maybe that could be the approach the OP may want to take.

If you can do this and manage to turn the project around you will have achieved far more than knowing the latest toolsets.

I don't think anyone is in the position to judge other IQ's especially co-workers. These people passed the same interview loop as you. Just puts them in the same "IQ" bracket as you. Maybe they also feel the same way as you and don't want to put their effort in trying to turn this team around and just want to coast and switch later on. You need to get off your high horse and try to understand the motivations of the team by talking to them individually and bringing stuff up in standups/meetings and suggest ways to improve. Work with your manager. Maybe you can be the one who can turn this team around without burning out yourself. In the end, its just a job and trick is to not take everything personally.