I work at a fortune 500 company right now and it's regular people who do mundane office jobs. Some just happen to be programmers.
I love the boring lame talk because it gets me out of work.
Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
131–140 of 255 posts
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
IQ is kind of a weird metric to measure people by. Do they get their shit done?
Why is it a weird metric?
Because it's not something OP or anyone can actually measure their coworkers for, so it isn't actually a metric, just a way of degrading their coworkers. To me, it says more (negatively) about OP, than it does about their coworkers.
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#133An established organization will work fundamentally differently from a startup. For some people, this is a hard transition to make.
If you want to actually make it work, you need to meet them halfway and assume that they know something about working in an established organization that you don't. Tossing out their institutional knowledge will likely be a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
This just may not be for you. After doing things a particular way, doing them a completely different way tends to be a trial by fire and most people don't want that and won't tolerate it if they don't have some personal crisis forcing the decision.
If you have other viable options that are more comfortable for you, there's no shame in pursuing those instead. If you don't, you need to spend less time feeling superior and more time trying to figure out how things actually work (as opposed to assuming your way is best in all things).
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#134How low can their IQ be if they can solve Leetcode mediums in 30 minutes?
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You are confusing IQ and intelligence. It would have been better to say "my co-workers do not seem to be highly intelligent".
I'm tired of the semantics, my co workers are dumb. They passed these interviews by memorizing the answers to questions, and they cant come up with useful software architecture. Everything they code is a one off solution to a one off problem.
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#136"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…
Maybe they are jaded that they grinded leet code for two months only to be working on boring problems.
I’ve also worked with people who are against trying something new or take forever (thanks processes) to do simple things. It doesn’t equate with how hard the interview and gatekeeping is. People know they can coast and riding out a year or two until the bottom 10% are weeded to make a half million or more is worth it to some.
All that being said yeah the comment was a bit crass for sure.
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#137> staffed with below-average IQ people
Just as an FYI, this comment comes off as incredibly arrogant to anyone who’s going to read it.
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#138"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…
That line is definitely a harsh way to put it, but as someone that has a similar feeling, my interpretation is as follows:
Many people in the industry have a very glorified view of FAANGs, and in particular one of the reasons that many people want to work at a FAANG is because of the idea of working and learning from the most impressive people in your field. If you've ever heard the saying "if you feel like you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room", I think that is a saying that these types of people ascribe to.
The problem is that oftentimes someone joins a FAANG and that glorified view is shattered. The reality is that the people at a FAANG are not necessarily geniuses (there are geniuses at FAANG, as there are at any company, but they are far and few between compared to the 'average' FAANG engineer). I work at a FAANG (look at my name and you can guess which one) and I would certainly say that it is very frustrating to me that my career has felt like it has effectively stalled ever since joining, because everyone on my team is just as clueless as I am and I do not find any of my direct or extended teammates particularly impressive or inspiring.
When this happens, the "shattering" reality that your new job isn't some wonderland and is full of all the same issues of your old companies can make you quite frustrated and dissapointed, and it's quite easy to place that blame on your coworkers or the tools they use. I don't think it's disdain as much as it is disappointment, and OP probably feels like they were sold a false bill of goods. I know I certainly relate to that a lot.
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#139"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…
I had the same visceral reaction to that comment. 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…
> I was the "below-average IQ person,"
I had a rule after my time working a peer equivalent to FAANG: if I consistently find myself the obviously smartest person in the room, I should go else where. There has been so much joy working in an environment where there are people who are more experienced, skilled, and/or talented than me.
At my current startup, which has been just amazingly successful, our engineering team hires a lot of people who are a lot like how you sound: no dummy and also emotionally intelligent/mature. It's been such a wonderful experience. I never have to hear any silly debates over the nuances of some irrelevant issues so some people can proof their intelligence. People know what the company's business is and just worry about that. Most of the times we work a 9 to 5 (10 to 6 because of Bay Area traffic) and go home. It's taught me a lot about startups and what it takes to succeed. Having the smartest people around working for you is one possible path but there are other very viable alternatives. I've also worked at companies with lots of former FAANG engineers, several Ph.D., and 3 full CS professors that burned that down ignominiously.
Re: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
I just got 4 offers from 3 FAANG companies, and I agree completely. None of the interviews had any filter for finishing tasks on time, writing good tests, improving team cohesion, or any of the many important characteristics of a great software developer. But, gosh, I can definitely explain how Aho-Corasick works.
IMO a huge missing piece is references. That part isn’t a new idea, it’s been part of hiring forever. A good reference from a past manager would mean a lot more to me than a 60 min coding challenge from leet code.