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Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

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Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#481

Post by jreese »

bumby wrote: post #474
cvlasdkv wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming that FAANG companies are offering "fair" compensation for the output of their engineers. How would anyone ever make a profit doing that? Employees are very rarely the exploiters and almost always the exploited.

If it wasn’t fair, why did you accept the offer? Let’s not pretend that FAANG employees are like an underclass that has to accept a job out of desperation.

It can simultaneously be true that 1) FAANG employees (including myself) are compensated and rewarded well above the national average, and potentially better than any other stable option available, and 2) FAANG employees are not adequately compensated for the value and revenue they generate for the company.

Amazon does not get the richest CEO in the world by truly compensating employees what they are worth to the company. Facebook literally tells employees that they target 90-95% of "market rate" for engineering salaries, based on location of the office they work in, and they refuse to negotiate with competing offers, resulting in massive compensation disparities between London and Seattle/Menlo Park.

I'm 35 and compensated far and above what I ever could have dreamed of making as a teenager, but when I look at the tens of millions of dollars I've personally saved the company through my actions and work, I don't consider my compensation "fair". A pat on the back, an "exceeds" rating, and a 15% increase in my bonus for that half is peanuts by comparison.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#482

Post by vegesm »

coolspot wrote: post #458
sokoloff wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved every week (though not every hour) of my computer programming jobs. I literally do it for free in my spare time and here some fools are willing to pay me handsomely to do it at their little glass and concrete spreadsheet/Powerpoint mine. The only "catch" is I have to work on problems they pick instead of ones I pick. Sounds fair enough to me; where do I sign?!

Yeah, I think lots of engineers feel the same. We just love to solve puzzles, coincidentally this is also well paid.

What GP meant is that after 5 years, you are just solving the same puzzles again and again.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#483

Post by stiray »

smattiso wrote: post #363
khazhoux wrote: post #346

This thread is seriously in need of some tough love. @faang0722, you're being a slacker, and not doing right by either your company or yourself. You're at one of the top companies in the world, and are safe from the jobs disaster that's gripping the entire country. Millions of people are desperate to receive $600-1600 from the government this month because they are unable to work. Millions are putting on shitty facem…

Don't listen to this guy. You don't have to change your own identity and your own personal compass to fit your company. You also don't have to succumb to the "starving Ethiopians" fallacy and take whatever crap job is given. This life has a billion paths you can take. Understand the tradeoffs and make a calculated decision but follow your own path. Granted you may end up homeless. But from experience there are way mo…

Exactly this. People fall for the blackshine of FAANG and large corporations etc. but this is just a PR. In reality, the larger the company is (was working for a few bluechips as subcontractor, including two from FAANG), more miserable is life for a developer that has still some life. It is a golden cage, where the largest problem is huge number of different "best practices" as they try to streamline the job. Endless discussions, processes, politics,...

For someone young, corporations are waste of life. See the world, get expiriences and when you are over 40 and you are sick of adventures take your enourmous CV and join the corp to wait for a pension. You will like the peacefull pace and they will love not having problems with you.

Suggestion over the thumb, before employing in large company, check two things. Number of manager levels from team manager to CEO and how fast they got additional levels of management. This will tell you all about the company you are joining.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#485

Post by skrtskrt »

mkoubaa wrote: post #480
skrtskrt wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good... only IF he can actually get to work on this stuff without being stomped on and blocked from every corner of the organization.

None of the FAANGs block personal projects from staff who are productive enough in their primary responsibility

What if the "personal" project is like "introduce this new tooling to the team, get it integrated into our CI pipeline"?

Anything that introduces new technology or has the potential to require some time from other teams (Devops, SRE) I can see running into organizational roadblocks in the final stages of the project, even if the individual is free to start the experimentation and justification steps them on their own.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#487

Post by bumby »

jreese wrote: post #481
bumby wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it wasn’t fair, why did you accept the offer? Let’s not pretend that FAANG employees are like an underclass that has to accept a job out of desperation.

It can simultaneously be true that 1) FAANG employees (including myself) are compensated and rewarded well above the national average, and potentially better than any other stable option available, and 2) FAANG employees are not adequately compensated for the value and revenue they generate for the company. Amazon does not get the richest CEO in the world by truly compensating employees what they are worth to the com…

Yes, but where it goes off the rails is when people expects the corporation to act against their own incentives. When people complain about compensation they get confused about how compensation is set.

Pay is not about the value you bring as much as it is about your leverage in negotiations. There’s many ways to get leverage like being the only person who can solve the problem, or systemic levers like unions.

If people aren’t getting paid adequately it’s usually because they don’t have the negotiation leverage to fix it. Conversely, we all probably know people who are of dubious value yet can command handsome salaries because they have some unique leverage.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#488

Post by Yajirobe »

smattiso wrote: post #363
khazhoux wrote: post #346

This thread is seriously in need of some tough love. @faang0722, you're being a slacker, and not doing right by either your company or yourself. You're at one of the top companies in the world, and are safe from the jobs disaster that's gripping the entire country. Millions of people are desperate to receive $600-1600 from the government this month because they are unable to work. Millions are putting on shitty facem…

Don't listen to this guy. You don't have to change your own identity and your own personal compass to fit your company. You also don't have to succumb to the "starving Ethiopians" fallacy and take whatever crap job is given. This life has a billion paths you can take. Understand the tradeoffs and make a calculated decision but follow your own path. Granted you may end up homeless. But from experience there are way mo…

Oh please, being a software dev in the US is being nothing but privileged. 'Starving Ethiopians' is not a fallacy - more than half of America makes less than $30,000. So yes, you are privileged and should be grateful.

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#489

Post by mnm1 »

Why not work on your own project three days of the week and take the 5th one off (or work on it 4 days)? You're making serious money for a super easy job. You'd have to be insane to quit, especially if you're working from home. There's no reason why you can't work another job and do whatever you want there, use whatever technology, and develop whatever pleases you. Or pick up a hobby during the day. Or learn some new tech just for fun. Or any number of things. Why should your job be the primary source of satisfaction?

Re: Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this?

#490

Post by b34r »

b34r wrote: post #370
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it had 3 principals and 5 sde3s in a time when the whole company had I can only imagine what principal / SDE3s that deliver products as big as DynamoDB got paid in bonuses/salary. Total comp had to be $500k-$1m+, no?

That’s not how software development works

Not sure why I was downvoted, it’s absolutely true. SDE is not a meritocracy.
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