yeah, probably more of the "not everyone is in it for the money" bs. A good excuse to short-change and lowball nerdy people. TC matters more than HR like us to believe, even more so going into a recession!
> not everyone is in it for the money ok, but... it is true that not everyone is in it for the money, or at least, not for the money primarily.
so, people join meta in droves to selflessly pursue Zuck's legless pipe dream? or maybe libra, the future of blockchain? oh wait, that got canned. Or what's The mission du jour? of course it's the money, what else.
If you believe Facebook is terrible, isn't taking a high-paid position there and gamifying their internal processes in your favor while not helping a floundering business plug the holes in its sinking ship the real way to take direct action? If several hundred people independently did this on their own (and perhaps not even intentionally), it could have a meaningful impact in taking down one of the worst corporations…
You're essentially promoting the old "bringing them down from the inside" defense, which next to "I was only following orders" is the biggest lie we tell ourselves in order to sleep better
That feels like the wrong model to me.
I don't want to work for FAANG for various reasons, but their negative externalities are either things I'd have no connection with or be in a position to push back against.
Sure, the bosses may say "do it anyway" and my only counter would then be to leave, but I expect most people in FAANG aren't actually connected to $relevant_controversy.
At least, that's my impression from (mostly) the outside.
I worked for large companies all my life and all of them are actually like this. I wonder how one can find companies with no office politics, and one that rewards real engineering work. Do any of the FAANGs actually qualify for this?
I just resigned last week having worked at a big company for 18 years. They dangled sr. director title, but it was just not worth it in the end. I did so without any job lined up. I wanted a break. My former colleagues are reaching out to see if I'd be interested in their gigs. But they're all large companies, and all large companies have the same big company bullshit. I do think smaller paycheck and smaller company…
Left what I would consider a big company for a < 10 person startup. I couldn't be happier. I honestly don't care that I had to take a paycut for it.
> not everyone is in it for the money ok, but... it is true that not everyone is in it for the money, or at least, not for the money primarily.
so, people join meta in droves to selflessly pursue Zuck's legless pipe dream? or maybe libra, the future of blockchain? oh wait, that got canned. Or what's The mission du jour? of course it's the money, what else.
I bet people have joined in droves for all of those things. I used to be that kind of person, thinking all the ideas the business types talked about were amazing and world-changing. Not so much now that I've seen so many fail, but I used to be.
The best example of why large organizations are like this was Engels writing on "the state": “The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; just as little is it ’the reality of the ethical idea’, ’the image and reality of reason’, as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an ins…
I've seen many a "startup within a corporation", but the benefits of that are almost never, what what I've seen, realized. I wonder what gives. Why can't anyone figure out how to make that work?
> Why can't anyone figure out how to make that work?
A "startup within a corporation" can never work because it's not legally a startup. You're still an employee of BigCo, so they can't grant you tons of shares for a penny so the culture will never be the same. And even if they manage to keep the group outside of most corporate politics, you're still ultimately employees so you'll be bound by HR and security policies because they have to.
The way to make it work which is fairly common is for the BigCo to fund a new startup which is a completely separate corporation and let it go its own way. If it fails let it fail or if it succeeds then they can acquihire it back in some future.
This person is getting a lot of snarky responses, but all of this is relatively true at Amazon also and it was true when I was at Intel 10 years ago. This is how large companies operate once they surpass the innovation phase, so it should be no surprise to anyone that's actually worked in a FAANG and doesn't pound down the kool-aid. Interesting how there's comments on this person being concerned solely with "TC" as i…
Sounds stupid to you but I really have ethics.
I will not work for a company like Facebook.
And I don't throw Facebook in the same bucket as companies like Google, Microsoft.
And sure Amazon and apple are more evil than the others but they are also so far away from Facebook.
> There's nothing wrong in working at a FAANG for the money Sure, if you believe that making more money is the only thing that matters in this world. If you take this logic to its extreme you can justify anything if it makes you rich. You're simultaneously criticizing a system while defending your participation in it. There are lots of things wrong with working at a FAANG for the money. If you don't like how Amazon t…
If you believe Facebook is terrible, isn't taking a high-paid position there and gamifying their internal processes in your favor while not helping a floundering business plug the holes in its sinking ship the real way to take direct action? If several hundred people independently did this on their own (and perhaps not even intentionally), it could have a meaningful impact in taking down one of the worst corporations…
That sounds like a rather depressing, unfulfilled existence to me. It's like someone getting a job with a military defence contractor, then sitting at their desk doing crossword puzzles for a decade.
This person is getting a lot of snarky responses, but all of this is relatively true at Amazon also and it was true when I was at Intel 10 years ago. This is how large companies operate once they surpass the innovation phase, so it should be no surprise to anyone that's actually worked in a FAANG and doesn't pound down the kool-aid. Interesting how there's comments on this person being concerned solely with "TC" as i…
> This is how large companies operate once they surpass the innovation phase I heard someone smart (maybe Naval Ravikant) say on a podcast that this becomes prevalent in orgs which have two or more layers of management between real customer-facing work and business ownership (CEO, co-founder, CTO, etc). Having worked in several startups as well as F500 FAANG-ish valley tech companies, I agree. When a manager reports…
I don’t understand. Literally every company I’ve ever worked for, successful startup included, had at least an engineering manager reporting to a director reporting to a VP reporting to a senior VP reporting to a CTO. Is this not a normal or good way of doing things?
This is why I don't work for large companies. I don't want the stress or to play the bullshit games. My last company tried to pretend it was larger than it was and introduced KPIs. I pushed back hard but had little control over it. I argued that if we were going to be judged on KPIs then that's all we would spend our time on. Commits matter? Guess I'm committing every few lines. Bugs found matter? Guess I better back…
I've worked for a number of large companies, and it doesn't have to be like this. It absolutely can be like this, but it depends what you want. You can plough your own furrow and be nicely rewarded for it and be in a very secure situation. What is described in this article is the sort of behaviour that'll get you through 1-2 years, but fairly quickly people will spot what kind of person you are. This post sort of implicitly views management as NPCs, they're not. They have their own things going on, but they do pick up on things eventually and it gets difficult to change their mind, it's pretty hard to shake that reputation so you'd better move on quick. You can do something similar - build more long term reputation, influence across teams etc. and that'll pay off in the longer term. Or you can say "I'm going to do it my way" and put your priorities first, work on what you think is valuable, and if you really succeed generally you will be recognised - these hacks are easy ways to advance, not the only way. All of these are different games you can play at Big Corp. But you don't have to play them, and you can choose your own strategy, but the basline is high pay, low risk, and you can always walk away with 0 guilt, and that's not a terrible place to be.
I just resigned last week having worked at a big company for 18 years. They dangled sr. director title, but it was just not worth it in the end. I did so without any job lined up. I wanted a break. My former colleagues are reaching out to see if I'd be interested in their gigs. But they're all large companies, and all large companies have the same big company bullshit. I do think smaller paycheck and smaller company…
Left what I would consider a big company for a < 10 person startup. I couldn't be happier. I honestly don't care that I had to take a paycut for it.
> I honestly don't care that I had to take a paycut for it.
Good for you. Here in Eastern Europe, the difference between working for big tech versus working for a local small business appears to be a factor of 5 to 20. I'm not saying money is the most important, but gee an 80% to 95% paycut does seem like a lot...