I see you joined Amazon. Do what every other smart person does, and quit.
Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
121–130 of 255 posts
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#122I don't think there's any shame in rage-quitting a FAANG company.
I was once in a high-profile, ambitious open-source (but not FLOSS) project which had much the same NIH syndrome as you're experiencing, but didn't have the staff/budget to maintain their tooling properly and I hated it to the point where I got myself fired, because I didn't have the integrity to quit on my own.
If you can change something, try. If you notice that it's futile, quit.
I can tell you from experience that trying to suffer through something while having no agency is really really really bad for your mental health.
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#123"A+ players solving hard problems" Is this really what people think when joining a large company such as FAANG ? I mean not everyone can be an A player in a company with 1000s of employees, correct ? Also not every team is going to be solving hard problems. Someone has to do the dirty things. Isn't that understood ? Not trying to shit on you OP but I would have tried to learn more about the team in interviews if poss…
> not everyone can be an A player in a company with 1000s of employees, correct ?
Well if you pay top salaries and have a tough recruitment process maybe. They claim to hire the best from all over the world.
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#124"I've told this to lots of people who work in other division (that I can trust) and they've said the easiest thing is to just accept it as it is and coast" The Big Head character from Silicon Valley is again proved to be (like all the characters) spot-on accurate. Mike Judge is sorely underappreciated. My $0.02 advice: you seem smart, hard-working, and self-motivated. Become a consultant and be your own boss. Use the…
Where do you list yourself as a consultant?
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 wi…
You shouldnt have to feel bad for calling people low IQ. I work at FAANG and feel the exact same way. Completely underwhelmed by the talent.
"If most companies optimize for finding the best talent and the people with the best talent change companies often then logically only the people joining a company have the best talent" - Average people are average and most people are average.
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#126You are on a bad team it seems. I wouldn’t blame your teammates and look at how you got there. They are probably better than you realize but motivation can play a huge role in interactions and performance.
You’ve said in a comment you have been at startups hiring and building teams. Those are growing teams. You are used to growing, building, and acting with accountability. Now you are on a team with turnover, that probably isn’t growing. Why? Is the team going to be shut down because of low value? Is it in a purely a maintenance function that will just be starved of resources? Is there bad leadership that can’t fix problems and has unrealistic expectations?
Likely whatever is wrong is out of your control. Don’t burn out trying to save something you might not even understand. Do a good job and try to learn “big org”. Look for a different team. Focus on extracurriculars. And find a new job at the year mark if it doesn’t get better (or earlier if you have too). Good luck.
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
The hoops you have to jump through to snag one of these jobs make it seem like everyone there must be on top of their game. The truth seems to be that once you've got the position you can coast, these organizations are just too large, too bureaucratic and too rich to solve the problem of poor performance effectively
> The hoops you have to jump through to snag one of these jobs This right here is exactly the problem. In the interview you are expected to write a fault tolerant k-way distributed sort and publish it to production, in 3 hours. Once you are embedded in your team they'll have you fixing typos on the landing page. "Our interview process is good at finding people who are good at interviewing, not good at their job." ~ S…
Thats why I love the only tech question we give to people: Write me a stopwatch. Pick a tech, define the features yourself, and make it while explaining what you're doing.
There is actually an incredible amount of technical nuance in this question and you can ask this both on junior interviews and senior ones.
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#128"staffed with below-average IQ people" I'm not sure why your co-workers' IQ is your concern. To come out of the gate with a comment like this sounds like you have a strong disdain for them. Part of your reason for joining the company was the paycheck. I assume the checks aren't bouncing. My advice is the same advice I would give to many people: Learn from your coworkers. Understand the problems that the team and the…
This stood out to me as well. I'd never attempt to quantify someone's "IQ", which is really a very specific type of test. There are many types of "intelligence."
I'd be more interested in productivity, adding value, understanding the problem space, leadership, communications, technical range, ability to listen.
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where?
https://acelerate.io/ - building an OS for restaurants, founded by former DoorDash employee. Lots of scaling, data modeling, and reverse engineering challenges right now. We just raised $14.4mm led by Sequoia: https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/14/acelerate-raises-14-44m-se... Our jobs board: https://boards.greenhouse.io/acelerate
Congrats! That's awesome.
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#130See if you can transfer internally. If not, quit. I suspect that even if they're not excited about you transferring, if you're willing to quit over it, they'll make something happen.
Teams at large companies are all different (small companies, too), and the way this reads, I don't think you'll be effective with any amount of toughing it out, and it will end up being more stressful than it's worth.