Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful

The "FAANG has A+ players solving hard problems" meme is a myth that people need to believe to support idea that working at a FAANG company is guaranteed to be the apex of your career. No one motivates themselves by saying, "I'm going to do the same work I'd do with the same caliber of colleagues as I have currently." This is the tech version of the American Dream, where we're not employed by Google yet, but will be in the near future.

FAANG companies certainly have a lot of very bright engineers. There's no disputing that. And they contend with some really thorny problems that admit no easy solutions, such as scale and content moderation.

But there's also plenty of smaller companies that have difficult problems with very sharp coworkers. Of course, they don't have the same prestige.

I regret to inform you that you got suckered; anyone thinking of working for a FAANG should thing about it not like a new and exciting tech thing. History moved fast, you're effectively working in an old crusty company that occasionally does cool and interesting things.

I seem to be getting a lot of heat for this comment - fair enough, but I will expand on that.

Before joining this company, I hired and managed teams across various startups. I don't think I would be speaking out of turn to say in every company we looked for aptitude and intelligence. I don't know what my previous or current colleagues literal IQs are, but you know a highly intelligent person when you meet and work with one.

Through my entire FOUR MONTH interview process, I met a dozen people, all of whom would be considered highly intelligent. Maybe I am naive to assume that's what that interview process was designed for.

And to be clear, those folks I interviewed with and many other people around me are highly intelligent. But the people I work with on daily basis, whom I did not meet in my interview, are categorically less intelligent and honestly at the root of most of the problems I've dealt with since starting.

Sorry if it is rude, but I think it's an honest depiction of the situation.

Leave?

I work for a FAANG, and have for a while. Maybe I have below average IQ, too, but I've met and had the pleasure of working with some of the smartest, hardest working, kindest people in my career here. Some assholes too, of course, but we're all human.

Everything is built in-house because it needs to solve problems at a scale that you've never worked at. Be humble. If the tooling is terrible, congrats! There's a bunch of impact in your future making the tooling better. And because it's a big company, it cares a lot about marginal productivity improvements like better tooling, and will reward you for it. That's pretty different than my experiences at startups that are struggling for survival.

Maybe you picked a bad team. That's a possibility, because large companies are less homogenous than startups. But that also means that there are good teams, whereas if you pick a bad startup the whole thing is bad. Sounds like you didn't do the homework you should have before choosing a team. Maybe, again, be humble and accept that you have things to learn, even if it's just how to see red flags prior to joining a team, and use what you've learned when choosing a team next time.

Good luck!