Ask HN: What did you think about working at a FAANG?
39 comments
What's missing in all these replies -- it depends on who you are :)
If you have experience and specialized skill, it can be worth it to go to Google / big tech. You can apply your skills (for considerable profit), and learn from others with different specialized skills. You can work on highly technical things that are difficult to find elsewhere.
If you're inexperienced or fresh out of college, I would say it's not worth it. You'll probably have a bad experience (and I've talked to multiple young people who this has happened to).
Google was good for inexperienced hires when I joined (2005), but it isn't anymore.
You'll learn more elsewhere in 2022. In fact, I'd strongly suggest that you'll learn the WRONG lessons at big tech. The real problem in those jobs is learning to navigate bureaucracy, rather than learning how to build things.
I talked to people who basically didn't get to build anything that anybody used for the first 5 years of their career, which IMO is basically a death sentence for an engineering career. They just shifted among cancelled projects and didn't learn anything. All their work was thrown away.
Good blog post about that:
https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16483241
(and the author was apparently experienced, so these bad jobs aren't limited to fresh college hires)
If you have experience and specialized skill, it can be worth it to go to Google / big tech. You can apply your skills (for considerable profit), and learn from others with different specialized skills. You can work on highly technical things that are difficult to find elsewhere.
If you're inexperienced or fresh out of college, I would say it's not worth it. You'll probably have a bad experience (and I've talked to multiple young people who this has happened to).
Google was good for inexperienced hires when I joined (2005), but it isn't anymore.
You'll learn more elsewhere in 2022. In fact, I'd strongly suggest that you'll learn the WRONG lessons at big tech. The real problem in those jobs is learning to navigate bureaucracy, rather than learning how to build things.
I talked to people who basically didn't get to build anything that anybody used for the first 5 years of their career, which IMO is basically a death sentence for an engineering career. They just shifted among cancelled projects and didn't learn anything. All their work was thrown away.
Good blog post about that:
https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16483241
(and the author was apparently experienced, so these bad jobs aren't limited to fresh college hires)
1. Note that this is a news aggregator for tech startups. Tech startups in large cities tend to hire most of their experienced engineers from FAANG companies. So, it's in a tech startup's interest to critique FAANGs.
2. You could want to be a great startup founder or early engineer as an ambition. Probabilistically, your most straightforward path to this goal is to go to a FAANG next. Golden handcuffs, most people come in with this ambition then don't leave because there's so many pleasant aspects. Think about point #1 again.
3. If you are trying to get into a more respected tech community and are limited by visa issues, which companies tend to solve more often than individuals, it's probably in your interest to find a company [1] that will clear this hurtle for you and [2] that has a brand you can leverage. FAANG is a subset of companies that would provide that option.Indeed.
For example my experience with big corpos was totally different from what I've been reading on the internet.
For example my experience with big corpos was totally different from what I've been reading on the internet.
The way it was once explained to me: there are three broad skills that are relevant to succeeding at a FAANG:
A) Technical brilliance/mastery
B) Willingness to grind/endure
C) Political savvy/ruthlessness/schmoozing
Any combination of two of these is sufficient to progress in you career. All three is even better. I’ve met A+B’s, B+C’s and A+C’s and they all do pretty well. If you just have one of these, you’re not going to get very far.
Maybe this is also true for other “non-FAANG but big” companies, I don’t know.
A) Technical brilliance/mastery
B) Willingness to grind/endure
C) Political savvy/ruthlessness/schmoozing
Any combination of two of these is sufficient to progress in you career. All three is even better. I’ve met A+B’s, B+C’s and A+C’s and they all do pretty well. If you just have one of these, you’re not going to get very far.
Maybe this is also true for other “non-FAANG but big” companies, I don’t know.
at big corporations (not bay area) i’d say brilliance is worth zero because the playbook mgmt is running is to basically cargo cult what more successful companies are visibly doing. AWS worked for X leader in space? sheep follow. creativity and individual thought is punished
However, if you can't get far, there should be some way outside of work to build up your broad skills. "A" you can build up on free time, but it's also mostly isolating. "C" is harder to come by outside of work especially as an introvert. I think we have enough bootcamps and such for A. Workshops for how to be influential in professional settings would be beneficial, because reading books about the subject is still no substitute for face-to-face office interactions.
These skills will get you far at any company. But there are a lot of places where the bar to hop is lower.
I was a SWE at google for a few years around 2013. I totally recommend the experience to anyone.
I left to join a small startup founded by friends, another experience I'd recommend to anyone.
In particular, I learned a ton. My prior job was a startup with a totally green team. At google, I found my team incredibly bright and motivated which was contagious -- You want to work hard an succeed because everyone else does. I can't speak to how this works for other teams.
I learned a ton about proper engineering, I got to see a larger, more well-written, more well-tested than I'll see in a long time. While I don't work with large-scale distributed systems written by thousands of people today, some of the lessons transfer.
For me, just access to the tribal knowledge was the most useful -- I was not an SRE but learned a lot about incident response by going to talks and reading threads. Seeing what is possible and what others have done is very inspiring.
I can't speak to FAAN or how G is today, but I'd recommend working there in 2013.
You certainly have less of an impact at such a huge company compared to a startup, but I've also found medium-sized companies to have that same blunting of impact, without any of the benefits.
I left to join a small startup founded by friends, another experience I'd recommend to anyone.
In particular, I learned a ton. My prior job was a startup with a totally green team. At google, I found my team incredibly bright and motivated which was contagious -- You want to work hard an succeed because everyone else does. I can't speak to how this works for other teams.
I learned a ton about proper engineering, I got to see a larger, more well-written, more well-tested than I'll see in a long time. While I don't work with large-scale distributed systems written by thousands of people today, some of the lessons transfer.
For me, just access to the tribal knowledge was the most useful -- I was not an SRE but learned a lot about incident response by going to talks and reading threads. Seeing what is possible and what others have done is very inspiring.
I can't speak to FAAN or how G is today, but I'd recommend working there in 2013.
You certainly have less of an impact at such a huge company compared to a startup, but I've also found medium-sized companies to have that same blunting of impact, without any of the benefits.
I think you have to come to terms with how you feel about the impact that company has on the world, and if you want to contribute to it. Certain letters in that acronym may be worse that others, and some may feel that all of them are bad.
Is your personal salary worth the impact it may have in others? That's something only you can decide. But all those companies are trying very hard to change the shape/fabric of societies. All of them have negative aspects. All of them have billionaires at the top, and that has is own baggage. You may only be a tiny, tiny cog in that machine, but you're a cog nonetheless.
Is your personal salary worth the impact it may have in others? That's something only you can decide. But all those companies are trying very hard to change the shape/fabric of societies. All of them have negative aspects. All of them have billionaires at the top, and that has is own baggage. You may only be a tiny, tiny cog in that machine, but you're a cog nonetheless.
FWIW I did not feel like everyone was super smart at my FAANG job. I didn't even feel that anyone was particularly curious. Obviously, YMMV depending on the company and the team.
If you are not fully on-board with the latest current tenets of wokeism (keeping up with this is itself a full-time job), and the cancel culture it creates (remember, the slightest slight is cause for you to get cancelled!), then you should avoid ever even considering working for any FAANG (or many other large) "tech" (really advertising) companies.
You WILL comply with the group-think, or you will be eliminated. Independent thought or differences of opinion are simply not permitted. They pay well, but that's what it takes to make people put up with the miserably hostile work environments they create (rah-rah "we're such a great place to work!" programs only go so far....)
You WILL comply with the group-think, or you will be eliminated. Independent thought or differences of opinion are simply not permitted. They pay well, but that's what it takes to make people put up with the miserably hostile work environments they create (rah-rah "we're such a great place to work!" programs only go so far....)
In other words, you had opinions outside your job description, and couldn't be a professional and keep them to yourself. It comes as a shock to some people that a corporation is not a democracy, and that yes, that applies to THEM.
We all need to know what we are being paid to do and just keep our mouths shut about things outside of the area that we're being paid for.
We all need to know what we are being paid to do and just keep our mouths shut about things outside of the area that we're being paid for.
I'd be all for everybody keeping their mouth shut. But that's not the reality. My employer feels compelled to send out emails opining on foreign wars and supreme court decisions and murder trials and the significance of gay pride month. If you want to keep politics out of work, it starts at the top.
If work is neutral ground, one might argue then, that all personal (political) opinions should be kept private and not discussed in the work place. Regardless of if they are left or right leaning …
That's generally the case until the politics target your fellow employees. Abortion is a healthcare issue and an HR issue that may affect any employee, and anti-LGBTQIA politics definitely can affect your co-workers' rights and their healthcare. Religion overstepping in the workplace, especially when laws are involved is another political issue that affects employees' relationship with their employer. These types of politics are difficult to keep out of the workplace because employment law crosses many of these boundaries, and most employees want to see their co-workers prosper.
That's the dodge that makes people angry. The left simply define whatever they personally care about politically/ideologically as fair game for the workplace because it affects other people (tautological), or they see themselves as in opposition to some sort of vague evil that they have to defend helpless colleagues from. So they impose radical ideology on everyone and if anyone objects, saying it's politics and they should keep it at home, they just claim either it's really not politics, or that it is but anyone who objects is evil and should be ashamed/cancelled for not being 100% on board.
I know a lot of ex-Googlers. They all got sick of this stuff and either left, or hate the firm but stay due to inertia. Over time more and more peel away. I don't know any who joined pre-2010 who still respect the company, and the reasons are always the same. They see it as having become a 1984 style Big Brother.
I know a lot of ex-Googlers. They all got sick of this stuff and either left, or hate the firm but stay due to inertia. Over time more and more peel away. I don't know any who joined pre-2010 who still respect the company, and the reasons are always the same. They see it as having become a 1984 style Big Brother.
The only thing they did wrong was fool you into believing that a private corporation can be a bastion for free expression. Sorry, that is what academia is for.
Corporations are just organizational machines for making their shareholders money. I'm sorry you're just now learning this, so late in the game.
Corporations are just organizational machines for making their shareholders money. I'm sorry you're just now learning this, so late in the game.
That seems like a collection of clichés that have nothing to do with anything I wrote. I worked at Google for years. It wasn't like that for most of the time I was there. The problems are new. The Google I joined was committed to political neutrality, and it worked. Meanwhile their ever more extreme purity spirals are not actually making them more money as far as anyone can tell. Probably the latter.
I don't think academia is any better, the culture that is messing up tech firms came out of academia.
I don't think academia is any better, the culture that is messing up tech firms came out of academia.
I've got tons of opinions and views that I would never share in work setting. It's not that I'm extreme or something, but it does require certain maturity not to get upset when people tell you that they completely disagree with your precious opinion. From my experience most people don't reach this far on the maturity scale, so it's usually not worth it at all.
I worked at Google as a SWE for several years and hated it: I was paid less than at my previous job for doing less ethical work, it was hella less flexible than any of my previous jobs, the amount of bureaucracy and internal politics was above anything I could imagine, the amount of gaslighting from VPs and up (e.g. at TGIF) was staggering, and it all came with a mild cult vibe.
I guess the most disappointing part for me was Google's culture, or at least what it's become. I was surrounded by coworkers with a tenure of 10-15 years hired straight from college who had no idea about life outside of campus and google3. Those poor folks got brainwashed by HR into believing that most non-work related conversations or, god forbid, a joke will undoubtedly be offending to someone. Honestly, I think I'd rather work with jerks than in such a sterile, dull environment.
On the bright side, the tech was pretty good. I wouldn't call it great, but they have everything you'd ever need. The code quality was above average despite over-engineering. The praised culture of openness is long gone but you can still somewhat feel its scent. The email-centric approach to communication was 100x better than anything else I'd seen. And there's a chance you can get on a team that actually does some good (but those are typically at DeepMind, Verily etc.)
If there's no better option, I'd say to give it a try. After all, it's just a job.
I guess the most disappointing part for me was Google's culture, or at least what it's become. I was surrounded by coworkers with a tenure of 10-15 years hired straight from college who had no idea about life outside of campus and google3. Those poor folks got brainwashed by HR into believing that most non-work related conversations or, god forbid, a joke will undoubtedly be offending to someone. Honestly, I think I'd rather work with jerks than in such a sterile, dull environment.
On the bright side, the tech was pretty good. I wouldn't call it great, but they have everything you'd ever need. The code quality was above average despite over-engineering. The praised culture of openness is long gone but you can still somewhat feel its scent. The email-centric approach to communication was 100x better than anything else I'd seen. And there's a chance you can get on a team that actually does some good (but those are typically at DeepMind, Verily etc.)
If there's no better option, I'd say to give it a try. After all, it's just a job.
I strongly recommend working for a FAANG. Even a few years are going to give you lasting benefits:
- You make significantly more money at a FAANG than most of the rest of the industry
- The klout of a FAANG on your resume will open a lot of doors to more interesting, higher paying, or more prestigious jobs
- You will gain a professional network that will be useful for the entire rest of your career
- Most SWE teams at any FAANG are using state-of-the-art tech, tooling, and patterns, which will be very useful experience to draw from in future jobs, even if not applied in exactly the same way
There's plenty of downsides to working at a FAANG, which every blog post can tell you. But in my experience those downsides are exaggerated and it's rarely so intolerable you can't last at least a few years.
So even if you have a terrible time, those lasting benefits are worth a lot of trouble. It could be a life-changing career move, and if you hate it, you can always quit whenever you want.
A relevant Dan Luu post: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/
- You make significantly more money at a FAANG than most of the rest of the industry
- The klout of a FAANG on your resume will open a lot of doors to more interesting, higher paying, or more prestigious jobs
- You will gain a professional network that will be useful for the entire rest of your career
- Most SWE teams at any FAANG are using state-of-the-art tech, tooling, and patterns, which will be very useful experience to draw from in future jobs, even if not applied in exactly the same way
There's plenty of downsides to working at a FAANG, which every blog post can tell you. But in my experience those downsides are exaggerated and it's rarely so intolerable you can't last at least a few years.
So even if you have a terrible time, those lasting benefits are worth a lot of trouble. It could be a life-changing career move, and if you hate it, you can always quit whenever you want.
A relevant Dan Luu post: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/
This is a clear cut objective summary IMHO. Couldn't have said it better myself.
Also like you said, there are downsides to working at FAANG. However there are downsides to working at every company, and IMHO, the downsides at FAANG and FAANG-like companies are at least compensated for by the upsides.
The one exception might be Amazon. I'm just hearing too many horror stories coming out of Amazon that it might be the one FAANG I have zero interest in working for. But even then, if you can bite the bullet and put up with everything for a year, you'll probably be in a better spot for the rest of your career than if you were to have been at some lesser company.
Also like you said, there are downsides to working at FAANG. However there are downsides to working at every company, and IMHO, the downsides at FAANG and FAANG-like companies are at least compensated for by the upsides.
The one exception might be Amazon. I'm just hearing too many horror stories coming out of Amazon that it might be the one FAANG I have zero interest in working for. But even then, if you can bite the bullet and put up with everything for a year, you'll probably be in a better spot for the rest of your career than if you were to have been at some lesser company.
Does this exempt Amazon as well? I heard from an ex Amazon employee saying that 50-60 hour work-weeks is the norm there, and they work you to the bone, but he also didn't specify if that was for his particular team/department only.
I'm guessing this is one of the exaggerated downsides, possibly coming from a skewed perspective of what is "normal" for a SWE if you spent your entire career in FAANG.
In any case, I'm still sure that working as a Amazon SWE would be light years farther ahead than working in a bottom of the barrel chop shop that pays less than half of market salary.
In other words, worst of the FAANG should still beat the best of the bottom-tier companies, especially if you're taking home much more money in the end.
I'm guessing this is one of the exaggerated downsides, possibly coming from a skewed perspective of what is "normal" for a SWE if you spent your entire career in FAANG.
In any case, I'm still sure that working as a Amazon SWE would be light years farther ahead than working in a bottom of the barrel chop shop that pays less than half of market salary.
In other words, worst of the FAANG should still beat the best of the bottom-tier companies, especially if you're taking home much more money in the end.
I would go further than that and say the worst of FAANG still beats not just "bottom tier companies", but many decent but mediocre companies where tech is treated as an unrespected cost center.
As the post I replied to above said, it's not just the pay, but also the intangibles like the prestige that will let you more easily pivot into other companies and potential lifelong networks of similar colleagues.
It depends on your priorities. Are you willing to make some sacrifices to get what is likely to be a golden ticket to catapult your future career?
If you're even considering FAANG, then you've already probably decided to make some sacrifices to go through the stupid leetcode grind.
As the post I replied to above said, it's not just the pay, but also the intangibles like the prestige that will let you more easily pivot into other companies and potential lifelong networks of similar colleagues.
It depends on your priorities. Are you willing to make some sacrifices to get what is likely to be a golden ticket to catapult your future career?
If you're even considering FAANG, then you've already probably decided to make some sacrifices to go through the stupid leetcode grind.
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Google was a good place to work as an SRE. I think the software devs (SWE) were also pretty happy. Most of the backend work at Google is designing, scaling, and running very large systems with a lot of requirements. Every product has to at least have a plan for serving billions of users around the world which means GDPR and local laws and the privacy and security requirements of being the biggest target for governments, hackers, and spammers. The tooling (build systems, linters, static analysis, profilers, tracing, deployment, monitoring, security, storage, and libraries) is fantastic.
From what I saw, everyone was quite intelligent and most were also very kind and well-rounded people. Every engineer you talk to will have a strong grasp of algorithms and data structures, usually strong math and statistics background, and plenty of language, kernel, and operating system authors and research scientists will be your (extended) coworkers. I felt like I was somewhere around the 40th percentile in ability/outcomes which is a big change coming from smaller software companies or IT where Google-level engineering skill is rare. Imposter syndrome is a thing when your best efforts fit neatly into median performance with a lot of other high-performers, so expect that and don't let it bother you.
Growth at Google means ability to grow in the global SWE/SRE market; you have to be in the top ~0.001% percent of engineers worldwide to get into very senior technical roles. There are still lots of rewarding roles as a L4 or L5 individual contributor.
I left because it's much easier to get promo by interview (with another company) than through the perf process and after 4 years the stock grant cliff without promo was a bit more stark than it is now, I hear.
If you can manage it, get hired in the U.S. or transfer once hired. London and other non-U.S. salaries are quite a bit lower, very unfortunately and unfairly in my opinion. Global labor markets are weird.
From what I saw, everyone was quite intelligent and most were also very kind and well-rounded people. Every engineer you talk to will have a strong grasp of algorithms and data structures, usually strong math and statistics background, and plenty of language, kernel, and operating system authors and research scientists will be your (extended) coworkers. I felt like I was somewhere around the 40th percentile in ability/outcomes which is a big change coming from smaller software companies or IT where Google-level engineering skill is rare. Imposter syndrome is a thing when your best efforts fit neatly into median performance with a lot of other high-performers, so expect that and don't let it bother you.
Growth at Google means ability to grow in the global SWE/SRE market; you have to be in the top ~0.001% percent of engineers worldwide to get into very senior technical roles. There are still lots of rewarding roles as a L4 or L5 individual contributor.
I left because it's much easier to get promo by interview (with another company) than through the perf process and after 4 years the stock grant cliff without promo was a bit more stark than it is now, I hear.
If you can manage it, get hired in the U.S. or transfer once hired. London and other non-U.S. salaries are quite a bit lower, very unfortunately and unfairly in my opinion. Global labor markets are weird.
It sucked. Constant gaming for perceived power by people who have been the smartest one in the room all their lives. Empathy occasionally happens, but it tends to get squashed. A lot, well pretty much everything, depends on the teams and projects you get directly involved with.
Yeah, same sort of experience here. It was interesting work, and I had some decent teammates, but every other person was an asshole, especially as they got further up the management chain. I'd never work for FAANG ever again, it's not worth the mental health damage. I hear similar from friends who work for big pharma. Soulless corporate vampirism.
But that isn't exclusive to FAANG. The problem with non-FAANG companies is they can have all these problems too - and don't have the benefit of being FAANG.
You could go work for some insurance company's cost center IT department and experience all of those same negatives while experiencing none of the positives that a FAANG brings to the plate to your career.
(For argument's sake, by "FAANG", let's refer to all similar "top" tech companies, not just the companies represented by those 5 letters)
You could go work for some insurance company's cost center IT department and experience all of those same negatives while experiencing none of the positives that a FAANG brings to the plate to your career.
(For argument's sake, by "FAANG", let's refer to all similar "top" tech companies, not just the companies represented by those 5 letters)
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You might as well try interviewing, you have nothing to lose. Maybe you want to revisit the anecdotes with an offer in hand.
It is a job. It is OK lol
Maybe it is because I am more senior now, FAANG or not reveals very little of your character or quality of work when looking at a particular someone. More like a baseline guarantee but that is about it
Ex-FAANG, now startup
Maybe it is because I am more senior now, FAANG or not reveals very little of your character or quality of work when looking at a particular someone. More like a baseline guarantee but that is about it
Ex-FAANG, now startup
Good pay good learning. Plenty of downsides I won’t bother listing, but only for elite eng in those companies, or creative people.
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where else are you going to work that pays highest and has better practices than most if not FAANG/HFT?
I've started thinking if I should try it too. I have a solid competitive programming background, and I think I'd go well in behavioural interviews. But is it going to be worthy?
Every day I see thousands of posts of ex-FAANG saying why they left, but I also see thousands of people saying why it's fantastic. They love to say how intelligent people that work there are, and some love to say how you will never grow there because everyone is good and you are just another brick in the wall.
Let's be honest, what are the good and bad sides of FAANGs?