Ask HN: Is all of FAANG like this? • Hacker News Board

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

#541

Post by Loughla » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 6:41 PM UTC

smattiso wrote: post #400

SaltyBackendGuy wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You also don't have to succumb to the "starving Ethiopians" fallacy and take whatever crap job is given Just opinion so feel free to downvote to oblivion. It's hard for me personally to rationalize their position as a 'crap job' (as I have had really crappy jobs in my life - see US Army). Maybe op's take is a little brash, however, there's some perspective to be drawn from the comment. Agree with your sentiment tho…

I think 'crap job' can be multifaceted. For instance take someone making a million a year at a hedge fund with a strategy of frontrunning public pension fund trades. To some that is a dream job, to others that is a waste of life. It depends on the individual. Some hate the Army, and some sign up to do 4 tours. You have to find your own purpose and your own way of staying motivated.

>To some that is a dream job, to others that is a waste of life.

This is what a lot of people forget - your experience isn't everyone's experience, and your perspective is just that - your perspective.

Just because OP has a job that you would consider a dream, his opinion isn't invalid.

For an example: I went to college to escape a farming life. Now all of my young, relatively wealthy friends tell me how lucky I was to grow up on a farm and live a simple life. They talk about how they want that simple life. And they're confused when I respond with something to the effect of: bitches, farming isn't simple. It's hard work for really, really, really low margins. There's a reason I went to college, and that was to get away from that mess.

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

#542

Post by dbish » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

My personal advice as an engineering manager at Amazon FWIW, is that sometimes teams do have issues with productivity for various reasons. If it is the team (and not specifically you), I would work to find a new team. I'd also caution against coasting/slacking like this. You may think everyone is ok with your pace of output, and you might just have a manager who is either bad at telling you quickly when they see an issue, or giving you some slack as you ramp up. When it comes time for promo and performance reviews, you may not be in the position you thought you were. A good manager would be providing this feedback proactively, but that is not always the case. You can also be proactive about this and discuss with your manager and team that the development cycle is too long (maybe gather data across your team) and find ways to improve it. Being part of a team is helping to give feedback on issues you see as well and working together to make progress against them. If your manager and team aren't open to that, then move on of course.

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

#543

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 6:44 PM UTC

logicslave wrote: post #402

jasonpeacock wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. There's no bonuses at Amazon (at PE/SDE levels at least), and there are compensation bands for each level. A top-ranked SDE3 that delivered DynamoDB should have similar compensation as a top-ranked SDE3 working on internal tools.

This isnt true. Top performers on top products always have larger compensation. Its not discussed openly, but guaranteed they are receiving bonuses in the seven figures. If you think this isnt happening, you are naive or havent been on an inner circle at a large corporation. Whoever told you theres no bonuses at Amazon is not a top employee

Is there any actual evidence of this, though? Whenever software engineer salary comes up on HN, there are always one or two people who come out of the woodwork to share this oh-so-secret information. "Despite the pay bands that all big companies have and some even publish, there are secret squirrel individual contributor software engineers who make $600K and get million dollar bonuses! Trust us, it happens, guaranteed!" But nobody ever actually produces evidence of this, and none of these unicorn engineers ever post to confirm it. Inevitably, someone will point to one of those online self-reported surveys and one of the rows will show some ridiculously huge salary. But that's the only thing I've seen that even remotely looks like evidence that there is this secret cabal earning millions as employees writing software.

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

#544

Post by akiselev » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 6:47 PM UTC

nogabebop23 wrote: post #528

jreese wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This post screams poor little millionaire. You should really take a look out how the vast majority of the world is getting by right now before sharing such an out of touch viewpoint. If you've gotten a job at a FANG you've shown you have immense personal resources and capacity to affect the change you desire. Who do you blame for your current situation? Not much sympathy from these quarters for the exploited top 5%.

Why go out of your way to judge what he said based on global socioeconomic conditions instead of on the local context? What good does it do other than emotional reinforcement and cultural signaling?

He wasn't asking for your sympathy, he was trying to contribute to a discussion and not every discussions needs to be immediately relevant to all seven billion people to be constructive.

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

#545

Post by ChadTheNomad » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 6:47 PM UTC

If you only work 1 day a week without them knowing it, you're basically walking into the office and stealing 80% of your salary off of the CEO's desk.

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

#546

Post by dbish » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

unreal37 wrote: post #260

eel wrote: post #36

If your FAANG is Amazon, it gets better. When you first join, no one knows what you can do, so you get crap tasks. You show what you can do and you get better tasks. As you stay on a team for a little while, you start to notice small improvements that can be made, so you make a well thought out suggestion (or you just go and make it better). Over time your tasks become projects. You understand the goals for your team…

He's not showing what he can do though. Making changes take a week when he finished them in a day is self-sabotage.

Yep. This is the issue. They may be kept with small tasks and eventually noted as a performance issue when it’s too late for then to show what they can do

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

#547

Post by xiphias2 » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 6:49 PM UTC

kanobo wrote: post #440

xiphias2 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are literally thousands of teams in more than 50 cities in the world he can easily move to. Quitting so fast without evaluating his options would be a stupid decision.

The costs of doing business at that scale disgusts the engineer, that's not going to be different in another city. This engineer is likely intelligent and has been at the company for a year so I have no doubt he has considered other opportunities within this company so yes I do think he should quit as soon as he has a plan. Many people in this thread think the asker is somehow unintelligent and a slacker. I'm answeri…

I was at a FAANG company as well (Google, with extremely slow dev tool velocity), and I don't think he isn't intelligent. But there are workarounds of the official dev process.

I liked working on parts of search quality for example (or any data mining project), where most of the time (and the way to promotion) is spent on research, not software development. It means that 90% of the code we write don't have to be committed (code reviewed, tested, documented, going through the approval process), just the code that goes to production. The smartest colleague of mine spent a lot of time figuring out the root cause of data/search quality issues, and made the smallest possible change in the system to get his change through. It's an art in itself, and can make a lot of impact and lots of money to the company as well.

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

#548

Post by forgot_old_user » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 6:50 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #52

During my nearly five years at Google, I have switched a number of teams and projects, as a contracting SDE. There were vast differences in the pace, communication style, and project success rate among them. There were very fast-paced projects with extremely sharp colleagues. There were small projects in contact with the prospective (non-engineering) users of the tool being built. There were slowish projects with som…

Not FANG, but at Fortune 50 company. I can second to this. There are teams that move quickly, use new technology, create new products. But most of the SWEs work on mature products with moats- the development is slow because of the complexity of the product, and redtape.

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

#549

Post by bumby » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

rmrfstar wrote: post #540

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.

> Let’s not pretend that FAANG employees are like an underclass Depends on your baseline. If you use other workers in the US, then you are correct. If you use a counterfactual in which employees meaningfully participate in corporate governance, then you are incorrect.

>If you use a counterfactual in which employees meaningfully participate in corporate governance, then you are incorrect.

Can you elaborate on this point? Do you mean that FAANG employees do or do not have a seat at the table?

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

#550

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 6:53 PM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #477

maximente wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yikes, this is painful to read. the power software engineers wield is almost unfair, compared to non-software laborers - there's unlimited ways in which to get paid fairly well, ridiculously easy lifestyle, and also work on tech that aligns with doing good in the world, generally speaking. one can't have it all at the same time... but with software, you can probably have one of the largest spreads of [mission, comfor…

It's easy and pays well, yes. It's generally not satisfying though. Maybe 20% of the time you're working on solving an interesting problem or doing what feels like "real" work. Much of the time you're spending in awful meetings / conference calls, answering emails, or working on features that nobody's even going to use. Maybe it's different in Silicon Valley.

[deleted]