Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful (2024)

"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 company face. Make incremental improvements.

If you really want to you can work late every day and at weekends. It's your choice. Bear in mind your job won't love you back.

I seem to be getting a lot of heat for this comment - fair enough, but I will expand on that.

Before joining this company, I hired and managed teams across various startups. I don't think I would be speaking out of turn to say in every company we looked for aptitude and intelligence. I don't know what my previous or current colleagues literal IQs are, but you know a highly intelligent person when you meet and work with one.

Through my entire FOUR MONTH interview process, I met a dozen people, all of whom would be considered highly intelligent. Maybe I am naive to assume that's what that interview process was designed for.

And to be clear, those folks I interviewed with and many other people around me are highly intelligent. But the people I work with on daily basis, whom I did not meet in my interview, are categorically less intelligent and honestly at the root of most of the problems I've dealt with since starting.

Sorry if it is rude, but I think it's an honest depiction of the situation.

Having worked for FAANG, I do tend to agree that there are not a lot of exceptionally smart people. However to say that they are below average intelligence is very dismissive. Its not exactly a breeze to get a job at FAANG, and you do have to know a good bit of stuff to get in.

That being said, if you consider yourself intelligent, and wanted to work amongst "smart" people, you would have asked questions about the team and the process, and made your decision on that. And also not equate IQ and intelligence when talking about people.

> you would have asked questions about the team and the process

The standard recruiting process for FAANGs seems to be that you are just a replaceable "human resource", and your team will be decided later (decidedly after signing an offer) and may change every now and then.

You may get better treatment with seniority, but I see people reporting that as the typical experience.

That reminds me of the old joke about hell being just a sales demo.

http://www.jokes.net/heavenandhell.htm

How does OP knows that they are low IQ? That seems insulting to me. It is one thing to say they lack right skills or are unmotivated to work hard. But saying someone is low IQ without doing IQ test is same as calling a fat person lacks discipline to eat healthy.

Or reading your or OP's comments and assuming that you have social and possibly serious mental health issues. Not very nice, right?

> Everything they code is a one off solution to a one off problem.

To me, this is more indicative of the company culture than your coworkers' IQ.

In school, I noticed that many people don't learn deeply.They get good grades even with a shallow understanding of the material.

They learn by heart and are not interested in why something works. (For example, what a Fourier transform essentially does. A Fourier transform is essentially projecting a target function to the sinusoidal bases. That is what the dot product implies.) I don't think this is necessarily related to intellect. I think it is somewhat related to laziness and lack of interest or curiosity.

They use a bunch of formulas and code snippets and glue it together until it somehow works without understanding it.

I am a big believer in learning deeply by focusing on the fundamentals.Here's what I previously wrote about that very topic:

> Instead of APIs, learn the fundamental algorithms that those APIs provide. Instead of OpenGL, learn rendering algorithms (raserization, Bresenham etc.). The same applies for other frameworks such as Vue.js. Learn how to write a virtual DOM yourself. Learn how JS operates under the hood. Learn how to implement a hash table (std::unordered_map) and a dynamic array (std::vector); understand why you cannot simply delete a bucket when using the open addressing scheme. Learn C and memory management, since many other programming languages are influenced by C. Implement the algorithms in C if you are proficient enough in it (gives you a better understanding).

IQ is literally the strongest predictor of job performance across every category. Even stronger than years of experience in the job. This result has been replicated by industrial psychology resource again and again over decades.

I get that it’s kinda rude to bluntly talk about IQ, but without a doubt intelligent colleagues make for a more effective work environment.

You can just directly observe how productive your teammates are, why bother using IQ as a proxy.

And it's not like OP gave his co-workers IQ tests.

I think there's three different potential points/statements:

* a) The main overall productivity issue* b) Making a more general point that they don't seem very bright, at least compared to former colleagues* c) Specifically mentioning IQ score

Yes even though the main topic is (a)... b/c is just extra context.

I think OP's goal was to make point b/c to give some further context on their perception of the situation (whether it's true or not doesn't matter, the point is explaining what they think).

Sure both (b) + (c) especially can make you look like a dick, but I don't think making the (b) point is totally irrelevant to the overall post. It at least gives us more insight into what OP thinks, even if they're wrong.

So perhaps going the (c) route (rather than b) was just an attempt at trying to be slightly more objective (even though there's obviously no evidence at all). (b) is vaguer than (c), so I don't see that (c) was completely irrelevant, even though it comes across arrogant.

> IQ is literally the strongest predictor of job performance across every category. ...This result has been replicated by industrial psychology resource again and again over decades.

Do you have source(s) for that?

edit: The top google scholar result for "IQ predict job performance" is Does IQ really predict job performance? (2015), a fascinating paper which discusses a lot of the relevant issues and their history.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10888691.2014.98...

"To supporters of IQ testing...the picture seems crystal clear. Job performance must be a good test of individual differences in intelligence. IQ test scores (or their surrogates) correlate significantly with ratings of job performance. As a result, IQ tests must be a valid test of intelligence.

What we actually have are scores from a predictor of nebulous identity correlated with ratings for a seemingly discrete construct that is turning out to be equally slippery. In other words, very strong conclusions are seemingly being drawn from correlations between two under-specified constructs. This makes interpretation of the (modest) correlations extremely difficult. In primary studies such correlations have generally left over 95% of the variance unexplained. Even the typical meta-analytic correlation of 0.5 still leaves 75% of the variance unexplained. This does not seem to us to constitute grounds for asserting test validation so strongly."

Their "summary of the main points":

"1. Much in developmental theory, and psychology in general, depends upon the validity of IQ tests. 2. In the absence of agreed construct validity this has weighed heavily on indirect validity using correlations with criterion outcomes among which job performance has a special status. 3. Hundreds of studies prior to the 1970s reported low and/or inconsistent correlations between IQ and job performance. 4. These correlations have been approximately doubled using corrections for supposed errors in primary results and combining them in meta-analyses. Such corrections have many strengths, theoretically, but are compromised in these cases by the often uncertain quality of the primary studies. 5. The corrections to sampling errors, measurement errors, and to range restriction have required making a number of assumptions that may not be valid and have created a number of persistently contentious issues. 6. The claim that the IQ-job performance correlation increases with job complexity is not born out in more recent studies. 7. A range of other—including noncognitive—factors could explain a correlation between IQ and job performance, and even constitute part or all of the enigmatic "general factor." 8. There remains great uncertainty about the interpretation of IQ-job performance correlations and great caution needs to be exercised in using them as a basis for the validity of IQ tests and associated concepts."

> He may be over indexing on mathematical intelligence (...)

It reads as OP didn't indexed anything and just wanted to denigrate people around him to try to portray himself as some kind of ubermensch towering over his peers.

You're looking for independent thinkers. You won't find them at a megacorp because the hiring funnel actively selects against such a personality. Good employees are good followers.

Perhaps you should reconsider selling out to the megacorp, and sell out to VC instead. Now that you're a Xoogler (or FANG-er, whatever), raising money will be easy.

That was my hunch as well. People who don't care about learning topics deeply. Understanding why something works etc.

I noticed that a lot in school/work. People can get good grades even without understanding the topic at hand.Many learn mechanistically and succeed with good grades.

I do the opposite, but it takes time and effort to learn a topic deeply using the Feynman method. Many are not interested in this. Many just apply formulas and code snippets, and they succeed nevertheless. Good for them!

I actually don't care about success or grades or whatever. I care about the topic, because I want to understand why it works. This is just me though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Of possible interest to you:

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

What about EQ aka emotional intelligence? Your comment betrays a very biased view. Is it at all possible these people are very good at areas you yourself may be considered "low IQ?"

And how are they to work with otherwise? I've worked with many "high IQ" people who were awful colleagues because they had superiority complexes, had no concept of collaboration, were crap communicators, especially for audiences not familiar with their domains, etc.

Meanwhile I've worked with others who may not be traditionally smart, be deeply technical, etc. But they got people. And people liked talking and working with them. And that led to progress, alignment, and less stress.

I know who I'd prefer to work with any day of the week.

I notice that while you talk a lot about why you believe you should be able to tell what "high IQ" people are like, you don't say anything about what it is about these people that tells you they're not.

In other words, all you've done is attempt to establish that we should just trust you when you say they're "low IQ", rather than give us any actual evidence that they are, or even any elaboration of what you mean when you say that.

I'm sorry that your thread is getting completely derailed because everyone here seems to offended by your IQ comment.

FWIW, I agree with you and am in the same boat. I joined a FAANG so that I could work alongside and learn from truly impressive people. So far, after a few years of working at my FAANG, I have not worked alongside one single person who I would consider impressive. I won't go so far as to say they're "low IQ" or dumb or anything like that. I enjoy them as people and I like working with them, but they certainly don't inspire me and I do not feel like I am learning things from them that further my career. All of them, even the ones at higher levels than me, seem just as clueless and lost as I am. And that's an awful environment to be in.

It's frustrating, disappointing, feels like you were lied to, etc. My only advice to you is to just quit. Don't stick around searching for something that you already know isn't here. It's very unlikely to get better.

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-changing decisions for employees, and it was important for me to be empirical in my decision-making.

It appears that working for FAANGs is a "mark of distinction," these days. I know they pay ridiculous salaries. I'm pretty much aware of the working environment, and don't find the prospect enticing.

In NY, I know many, many folks that worked in the finance industry as brokers and traders. They got their licenses, and made a whole boatload of money in a few short years, while absolutely destroying their mental and physical health.

They then left, when they couldn't stand it anymore, and used the money they made to start companies, doing the things they liked doing.

Maybe that could be the approach the OP may want to take.

> 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.

Not to mention "so what if the iq is actually low?". These folks have passed the same bar the OP has. Now they have to work together with existing team and achieve what progress can be achieved.

Anecdotally, a lot of engineers (and especially managers) have this mentality where they don't treat the job as something that puts food on table and helps the company move their products forward in what ever pace the overall organisation is happy with. They want to get the high of entire life's achievement there which results in dissatisfaction/burnout.

>These folks have passed the same bar the OP has.

The notion that any type of consistent "bar" exists for hiring at FAANGs is a myth. These companies are far too large to consistently apply hiring standards. Some teams intentionally have different standards, some teams unintentionally (due to the hiring managers or interviewers just not being on the same page) have different standards, even within their specific team. Some teams are so desperate for people that they'll hire anyone with a pulse, while others are so flooded with applicants that they don't hire anyone unless you have 6 PhDs and won a nobel prize.

At my FAANG, it's so well known that the "hiring bar" is bullsh*t that when someone wants to do a team transfer, we usually require them to go through a full hiring loop again, just like an external hire, because there are some teams/organizations within my company that we do not trust to have upheld a reasonable bar when initially hiring someone.

I’ve never heard of Olympians or similar (ARML or whatever) at Amazon.

For what it’s worth, the process is becoming standardized at the L5 Industry hire level at Amazon as it was for most L4 new grads. The hiring bar being different across orgs is going away soon.

> have this mentality where they don't treat the job as something that puts food on table

Boomer?

> Part of your reason for joining the company was the paycheck. I assume the checks aren't bouncing.

Best and funniest comment.

OP really should have a side project or something to keep skills nice and sharp but I don't see a reason to complain about working for CV companies like a FAANG making shovel-loads of cash from every orifice. Not sure what the downside is, maybe I've been too poor for too long.

This stood out to me as well. I'd never attempt to quantify someone's "IQ", which is really a very specific type of test. There are many types of "intelligence."

I'd be more interested in productivity, adding value, understanding the problem space, leadership, communications, technical range, ability to listen.

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.

Exactly!

OP should also consider being perhaps less inflammatory with his language. Be mindful of others.

Simply complaining won't help you, OP. Be proactive and seek to synergize[1].If you are Einstein-level smart, then why don't you synergize with people instead?In a gearbox, every part counts. The smaller gears and the bigger gears do play a role in the final transmission.

Learn to make the best out of a given situation. If you can't or don't want it, you can leave and go somewhere else.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effecti...

> I'm not sure why your co-workers' IQ is your concern

It's a concern as much as working with a smart person that can understand - and support, and improve on, and challenge if needed - your ideas is a delight and brightens your day. And working with somebody who can't get the basic things and you have to waste time on explaining the obvious and treading water instead of moving forward is a drag and makes your life hell. Of course we're not talking about IQ score on a puzzle test or something like that - I'm sure the OP talks about practical skills as seen in everyday interactions. I've been lucky to work mostly with very smart people - but occasionally there was a dud, and it's very annoying and sucks a lot of energy out.

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.

> below-average IQ people.

..

> Any advice is appreciated.

Not sh*tting on your colleagues with this generation's phrenology would be a great start.

More generally, it sounds like you are starting with the idea that you're better and smarter than everyone you work with and only you can see the problems, as opposed to everyone you work with being (by and large) decent and hard working people who are making the best of a complicated situation. Learning about that situation, chesterton's fence etc, will be more productive that presuming everyone you work with is an idiot.

This.

Wonder what this person's teammates might have to say about them?

"They just started and think they have all the answers without even considering there might be complex and higher-level reasons why a decision was made."

"This supposedly smart person joined our team and does not respect the strengths our diverse experiences and skills bring to make the sum of the team greater than it's parts."

"This person is a condescending jerk who treats everyone who disagrees with anything they say as inferior to them."

"This guy just joined and has no clue about what problems we deal with and the importance of write simple and maintainable code, and instead insists in throwing in half the GoF book in what should be a simple six-liner code change."

"To make matters worse he handles code reviews very poorly, complains about his abstractions being flagged as unacceptable while systematically failig to understand they are not needed and just worsen code quality and maintainability while really adding nothing in return."

"Ultimately he just shows he has a fundamental misunderstanding of the basics of software engineering, specially the importance of making things as simple and as maintainable as possible, displays an unwillingness to learn and adapt, and when faced with any sort of criticism he shows poor attitude and professionalism such as accusing everyone around him of being dumb."

I don't necessarily agree with your point of view, but these two concepts were new and interesting to me. Posting their meanings for others that haven't heard of them either:

> Phrenology

Pseudoscience which involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits.

The study of the conformation of the skull as indicative of mental faculties and traits of character.

> Chesterton's fence

Principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood.

>> Phrenology

> Pseudoscience which involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits.

Funny story (for us who live a century later):

I heard Norwegian phrenologists traveled around Norway to measure Norwegian skulls and how it related to personal traits and their conclusions were that there were broadly two kinds of Norwegians:

- "long-skulls" in the eastern part: these were friendly, generous, open-minded and intelligent.

- "short-skulls" on the western coast: these were dumb, stingy and distrustful

Wonder were those researchers came from ;-)

I didn't know it, so here goes:

"Chesterton's fence is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood."

Very reasonable.

Leave?

I work for a FAANG, and have for a while. Maybe I have below average IQ, too, but I've met and had the pleasure of working with some of the smartest, hardest working, kindest people in my career here. Some assholes too, of course, but we're all human.

Everything is built in-house because it needs to solve problems at a scale that you've never worked at. Be humble. If the tooling is terrible, congrats! There's a bunch of impact in your future making the tooling better. And because it's a big company, it cares a lot about marginal productivity improvements like better tooling, and will reward you for it. That's pretty different than my experiences at startups that are struggling for survival.

Maybe you picked a bad team. That's a possibility, because large companies are less hom*ogenous than startups. But that also means that there are good teams, whereas if you pick a bad startup the whole thing is bad. Sounds like you didn't do the homework you should have before choosing a team. Maybe, again, be humble and accept that you have things to learn, even if it's just how to see red flags prior to joining a team, and use what you've learned when choosing a team next time.

Good luck!

> Maybe I have below average IQ

No you don't. I find OP's bold characterization of his co-workers inflammatory.Below average in general means "borderline retarded"[1]. You are obviously not below average. Stop saying that, please.

[1] https://paulcooijmans.com/intelligence/iq_ranges.html

I think the issue is because of people who care less about learning a topic deeply. Understanding why something works at all etc.This might be the actual complaint of OP.

"A+ players solving hard problems"

Is this really what people think when joining a large company such as FAANG ? I mean not everyone can be an A player in a company with 1000s of employees, correct ? Also not every team is going to be solving hard problems. Someone has to do the dirty things. Isn't that understood ?

Not trying to sh*t on you OP but I would have tried to learn more about the team in interviews if possible or is that just not a thing with FAANG interviews ?

The "FAANG has A+ players solving hard problems" meme is a myth that people need to believe to support idea that working at a FAANG company is guaranteed to be the apex of your career. No one motivates themselves by saying, "I'm going to do the same work I'd do with the same caliber of colleagues as I have currently." This is the tech version of the American Dream, where we're not employed by Google yet, but will be in the near future.

FAANG companies certainly have a lot of very bright engineers. There's no disputing that. And they contend with some really thorny problems that admit no easy solutions, such as scale and content moderation.

But there's also plenty of smaller companies that have difficult problems with very sharp coworkers. Of course, they don't have the same prestige.

> But there's also plenty of smaller companies that have difficult problems with very sharp coworkers. Of course, they don't have the same prestige.

Or money.

Or visibility.

Or value on your resume (in certain circles).

But what smaller companies have that I've found big companies don't: a distinct lack of places to hide.

Sure, you can get folks who don't work out (I've been one!) but at all the small companies I've worked out, everyone is pulling together and no one is really slacking. My theory is that it's too easy to see when someone is slacking at a smallco, so folks don't do it.

I find that delightful.

> 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." ~ Someone I follow on Twitter

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.

You'd think that interviewers would investigate "designing for testability", which is in some ways similar to algorithm design — it's an architectural and optimization problem. You could even present open-ended programming exercises such as "design tests for this system".

Similarly, you could test for ability to architect a Git commit history. Git uses some important algorithms (e.g. content addressable store, tree traversal) and people who demonstrate an understanding of how to leverage it well are likely to be more effective candidates.

Thats why I love the only tech question we give to people: Write me a stopwatch. Pick a tech, define the features yourself, and make it while explaining what you're doing.

There is actually an incredible amount of technical nuance in this question and you can ask this both on junior interviews and senior ones.

>everyone there must be on top of their game

On top of their hoop jumping game.

Generally it's a normal thing to think about FAANG.

I've interviewed at a few and they were the hardest interviews I've had. So it stands to reason that the people making it through must be good.

Of course you could claim the people making it through just "leetcode" all day or whatever. But still we all know these companies because they're omnipresent in our lives, we use their products, we assume they've got smart talent internally.

> I would have tried to learn more about the team in interviews if possible or is that just not a thing with FAANG interviews ?

Depends on the FAANG, but a lot of them do pooled interviews and assign a team later. Some do a weeks long orientation/training and you have some ability to more or less interview for final placement, and there's some other styles as well. For important teams that have trouble hiring, probably some people get selected into it without a lot of choice.

Either way, in a pooled hiring environment, you're probably not meeting with people on the team you'll work for before you join, although maybe you'd get to talk to a hiring manager after an offer; maybe.

Yeah I don't understand this idea that Google is all of that.

With any company of any size the scale of grunt work / tedious maintenance and troubleshooting old stuff is going to grow massively.

Being Google or anyone will not change that.

"A+ players solving hard problems"

Eh. IMHO they are a group of super good test takers and white board ninjas.

Also not every A+ hard-problem team would be willing to recruit an unproven newbie who knows nothing about internal processes and lore and culture of the company and would require a lot of training and adjustment and handholding for a while. Why bother if they could have somebody from another team who has worked there for a while and proven themselves and knows what they need to hit the ground running?

Maybe they let the newbie to clean the dojo floor, and sweep the garden, and cut the wood, and take out the garbage, and paint the walls, and so on for a while and then he learns the ropes and knows more he could find himself a team that is more to his taste.

> not everyone can be an A player in a company with 1000s of employees, correct ?

Well if you pay top salaries and have a tough recruitment process maybe. They claim to hire the best from all over the world.

This is what you say when asked, "Why do you want to join XXX?". Say it long enough, you internalize it and accept it.

FAANG usually don't hire for a specific team, you get matched after. It's a crapshoot where you end up, but they usually let you transfer relatively easily if positions are opened.

- Why do you want to join XXX?- https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2014-08-17

Yeah I don't understand this idea that Google is all of that.

With any company of any size the scale of grunt work / tedious maintenance and troubleshooting old stuff is going to grow massively.

Being Google or anyone will not change that.

Perhaps that startup history with greenfield type situations blinded OP to that reality?

Ex-Navy & programmer here: It feels like I am pointing out the obvious, but FAANGs have big problems, way bigger than a startup, and I'm not referring to only the technology. They have big organizational problems, like managing an aircraft carrier. They need to hire the smartest people and pay them a lot of money to manage those problems. Not every problem is sexy and many people are needed in the engine room to keep the fresh water distillery running and the ship sewage system from clogging.

The U.S.'s $13 Billion Aircraft Carrier Has a Toilet Problem

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a319296...

I had a manager once who was ex-Navy (electronics specialist, not an officer). He approached management with a hard-nosed Type A mentality.

He definitely went after people who he saw as coasting, and in some cases that was undoubtedly justified. He got results but there was also a lot of churn. He also made the mistake of taking too much on himself because he saw that as easier than the hard work of understanding and motivating people. After a while the atmosphere fell into bad faith, cynicism, and lack of trust. After some span of time he was moved to a position that kept his rank but removed his reports. The churn got so bad that upper mgmt had to deal with it, and HR also got involved.

I think he's working at Amazon now.

> I think he's working at Amazon now.

Sounds about right.

> staffed with below-average IQ people.

This comment doesn't reflect well on you.

I've recently joined a FAANG as well, and I've been disappointed with the code quality and the tooling. I expected better. Yet I feel there are tons of things to learn, and there are definitely bright people there. If anything, it reminds us that it's not easy to build software.

Quit your whining and fix the damn problems. You sound like an entitled brat. If you're so smart compared to everyone else on your team, then you should have no problems fixing things. Why do you have to work nights and weekends? Are they asking you to? If not, then why put that on yourself? And even you work occasional nights and weekends, so what? Part of the joy of software development is the positive feedback loop of fixing something and moving on to the next broken thing. I did nights and weekends in the past because it was fun! I enjoyed problem solving.

As someone in a movie once said, "Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That's all it is. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem... and you solve the next one... and then the next. And if you solve enough problems, you get to come home"

Congrats on landing a FAANG position! As long as the environment isn't toxic, you can find a way to be content.

Use this as an opportunity to learn how to adjust your thinking so you can thrive personally in a challenging environment. You may never get to a point where you love it, but you can probably get to a place where you are successful and can focus on the positives.

Learn how to work well with challenging people. You'll encounter more of them later in your career. Again, adjust your thinking. These people almost certainly have their positive qualities. Work with those positive qualities and become a master at mitigating or avoiding their bad qualities.

As far as working nights and weekend goes... do you really have to do that? Are other team members doing that? Big companies are not like startups. All the things will never get fixed, and you simply need to do your best with things in a permanently semi-broken state.

I understand that you don't want to coast. You don't have to even if others are. Focus on doing an excellent job on your corner of the world. Your projects, your code, helping others, etc.. Worry less about the bigger picture.

Also remember that it's not forever. This is an investment in your future career.

I appreciate all the comments (even the criticism). In so many ways, this post has already helped me see things more clearly.

One final thought is that I know I can quit - that isn't the question. I could make more money (with less stability) consulting, or find a middle ground at a Series C+ company.

What I probably should have said in my OP is that quitting feels wrong. I've never quit a position after three months and this is honestly the first time everything is telling that quitting is the right decision. As dysfunctional as this team is, quitting would feel like letting them down, and it just isn't something I've done before.

But again, these comments have given me perspective and will make me give this more thought.

It sounds like you know this job isn't a good fit for your disposition and ambitions. Staying somewhere where you're not a good fit won't really do anyone any favors, and a FAANG will have no problems replacing you.

I was in your shoes a few years ago. It was a dream of mine to work at a FAANG and when I got there, it was super disappointing for a lot of the same reasons (IQ comment aside). I consistently got good/great performance reviews without working nights/weekends and I could've kept coasting for a long time but I would've been miserable. I left and I'm back in the startup world now, which has its own problems but I'm happier.

The one thing I wasn't able to get from the post is what it is you actually want out of your job. It sounds like working with smart people is one component. You mentioned an efficient toolset. Is that it? I doubt it. It's probably worth taking the time to sit and figure that out before you move onto your next thing.

As software developer we're in a unique position of choice, and IMO we should enjoy that while it lasts. It's not guaranteed to be like this forever. Life, and your career, is just way too short to spend in a place that you know is wrong.

> As dysfunctional as this team is, quitting would feel like letting them down

Do you think your FAANG employer would have a second thought about letting YOU down? Doubtful.

The first rule of survival is to take care of yourself so you can help others. In this case, self-care likely means leaving the job.

What would you advise a friend to do in this situation? Are you, as a person, willing to care for yourself the way you might care for a friend?

There are plenty of reasons you might want to stay - to try to change teams, to try to get better at working with imperfect teams, to get better at establishing personal boundaries (not owning every problem you run into), or your resume. I would likely stay in your position for at least 1 more month to give things a chance to change.

But a sense of obligation is not a good reason. You owe the company and the team nothing, your employment is fundamentally an at-will business deal, anybody who tells you that you're all "friends" or "family" is very confused or downright lying.

There's a pretty good chance the rest of your team has almost no emotional investment in the "success" of the team and couldn't care less if you leave.

You don't owe them anything beyond your best effort during the time you work there.

There's nothing wrong with leaving a broken work situation.

Don't try to fix everything. Pick small battles and things and fix them one by one.

You're not at a startup where "fix all the things ASAP or we die" is the driving force. Settle in and work on making things better, even if it's just to keep you in play as you investigate other options.

A year of improving a team would give you a solid foundation for an internal transfer, for example.

Also try to get alignment within your team. Does everybody on the team agree these things are so broken? If not, try to find out things you all agree are problems and then fix those (be it by sharing information better, or picking better targets).

I have no idea what you mean about "working weekends." It sounds like you just made up a line in your head "1 year" and then made up a story "I'll be such a victim if I have to fix every single thing myself in 1 year, it will require such suffering." Except nobody told you that you have to fix every single thing on your team in 1 year, why don't you fix half of it in 40 hour weeks, and if it's things people agree are problems and you outshine your team so much then I think you'll find it's nice to be appreciated.

This plus the IQ comment, plus the nature of the question (how much deep down did you turn to HN because you thought we'd give you a simple quick fix? how much did you ask this "question" just to vent?) makes me think you might be a challenging person to work with. This could be a great opportunity for you try to attain technical mastery of yourself, your presentation, and your emotions/attitude.

I've worked at two different FAANG companies, and have a different view than some of the other commenters here. It sounds like you want to grow, learn, and advance, and I don't think you'll be happy kicking back and coasting.

The first piece is that mobility is high between teams at almost every FAANG company. At my first one, I moved 3 months later because the initial team wasn't a great fit for me maintaining a lot of slow moving legacy systems. I moved to a team working on much more greenfield projects with more attention on the products themselves, and I thrived for several years. See what your options are to talk to other teams and move to one that aligns better with what you want to work on.

The other related piece to this is that because mobility is so high, there do tend to be certain teams or areas with higher turnover and lower quality hires in some cases. No one wants to work on hard to maintain and neglected products, most good engineers that start there move on, and so it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.

There are likely some extremely brilliant people to learn from at the company (even if not in your team), so try to seek out and find them in teams with openings. I agree it's easier to move after a year, but if the fit is really not right you can likely get an exception going to a team with an understanding manager (who you would enjoy working for anyways). Set up some non-formal meetings based on the internal job board and be open with all these experiences and concerns.

Finally, the internal toolset is a real challenge, but I've come to take a slightly less pessimistic view on it. First off, the internal tooling tends to be worse on an individual workflow level, but accepting it has largely been better for me than fighting it (in most but not all cases). It's slower than a modern toolset, but still usually productive once you embrace what it's good at. The flip side is there are usually good reasons it's evolved to where it is today. Some of these reasons have to do with the scale of how many teams are working together, and understanding that will help explain why it is what it is. The other reasons are just that some of these companies have now been around a long time, and shifting to something better would be quite painful organizationally, meaning it's not ideal but the alternative would also be painful for the organization at a whole. You're new to it, so are at the opposite end of that.

I've been in two FAANG companies and I can tell you know - go back to startups. I came from startups and couldn't wrap my head around how slow things are. In FAANG everything is promotion driven so people spend most of their energy reverse engineering the system and choosing work that will help them get promoted. It's a never ending, beautifully designed rat race. You will spend weeks on performance reviews, evaluations and other HR corporate mambo jumbo. If you spend more than 50% of your time on actual work you are lucky.

If you have a startup mindset you should go back to startups. You will be more productive, happy and grow faster.

Take the money, max out 401k + after tax, save whatever you can after that, and get your fulfillment outside of work, just like the majority of other employees do. After a few years, you shouldn't need your FAANG job anymore.

If you wanted to work on something interesting, you should have stayed at a startup. You wanted to make bank, and this is the price.

> If I do want to stick this out and turn this team around, I'm going to be working nights and weekends for at least a year - there's just too much to fix.

Is it worth though? For whom are you fixing the issues? For the coworkers who will leave while you're still refactoring? For the charismatic boss? Your own personal pride? Also, is the work worth your overtime? If they staff "idiots", do they deserve your free time on the weekend?

I applaud you for being able to care so much in what you describe is a terrible team.

"Instead, I'm on a team that has and horrendous turnover and is staffed with below-average IQ people.""This company builds EVERYTHING in house, and the toolset is like going backwards in my career 10 years."

I am guessing this is either Amazon or Google. I would think that this is most likely Amazon ("horrendous turnover": 50% of people who join Amazon leave within the first 2 years). In LinkedIn you will routinely find people from Amazon showing their badges stating that they completed X+ number of years. Have you seen people from other places routinely doing this? That itself is a dead giveaway to the critical eye.

Btw, your IQ comparison is extremely derogatory. So please edit that out.

What's wrong with being derogatory? If I want to go to the bar and complain that my coworkers are all so ugly it hurts to look at them, that doesn't hurt them, and you could genuinely sympathize.

Edit: below-average IQ people can be genuinely painful to work with. If you recast it as "I have to explain simple things to my coworkers repeatedly, they don't grasp abstractions, forget what was said in meetings, and make random changes without understanding why", you should be able to sympathize with that. It's also a sign your team is considered low status, and you might not be able to accept that.

Everything you've said indicates you are working at Amazon.

Save all of the money and run away once you've lucked into a Google offer.

I got denied from Amazon twice, which actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I am now the lead dev and architect at a normal older company and I have complete freedom to deliver whatever my users ask for. I literally still can't believe how easy the development process is when you remove all of the BS at FAANG and worse, BigCorp.

Nobody is stupid if they can pass Amazon's interview earnestly. But it is possible to lack motivation and professionalism. That's what I believe Amazon's SWE's are facing.

>FOUR MONTH interview process

Yeah, that’s Google

Go back to work for a startup? Large organisations are large beasts, with their own culture and way of working. Every project has tons of stakeholders and everything is moving slowly.

In my experience, you'll only really get to solve problems at a startup. At a FAANG-sized many decisions are likely made "by committee" or by some higher up, and your project is always at risk of getting blocked for political reasons.

If you enjoyed working at startups in the past, I'd go work for a new one that you're finding exciting!

So you've achieved a goal of yours, are getting excellent pay, and gotten a FAANG on your resume.

Don't kill yourself now working nights and weekends. But do take the time to evaluate what is important to you. You can probably get hired most places you'd care to work now, so...where is that? What makes a place ideal for you? What would you be willing to give up to make that happen?

I think cooling your heels there for a while is a given; that might be coasting, sure, but it also might be determining specific small areas within the company to pour yourself into to try and improve.

After you've been there a bit, see if things have improved, as you've gotten more context. If not, you're in a better position to move on; you've now got the FAANG on your resume, any recruiters you talk to will know not to lowball you, and you'll have spent time thinking about what actually makes you happy in a workplace and can look to seek it out.

But I will say, having worked in 5-6 companies now over a 12 year career, no place will have everything you want, and no place will stay the same. Figure out what is most important to you. It might be compensation and stability; it might be interesting problems, it might be something else. If it's either of those two, though, you may want to look outside of your main place of employ to figure out how to meet the other need; job for compensation, personal work for interesting problems, for instance. Or get permission for some moonlighting and take some contract work from some old contacts maybe.

It seems unlikely that your co-workers have low IQ, but it does go to show that doing well on algorithms and toy puzzles doesn't necessarily lead to an interesting job. It seems odd that you would be assigned to a team that didn't personally interview you - is this normal practice at FAANG companies?

Your co-workers may just be zoned out and collecting a paycheck - at some point the workload can become so impossible that you just don't care anymore. This is especially true if you don't care about a company's mission, product, or customers. Unfortunately the tech boom has led to high turnover at some places, and people just jumping to the next big salary instead of picking a good long term fit.

The tech industry is big enough that you can do what makes you happy - the big name places sometimes aren't a great fit. I've found a pretty good career working at mid-tier Fortune 500 companies. There a lot of good opportunities all across the US if you're willing to forgo SV salaries, know your stuff (and can learn new tech quickly), and focus on helping the business instead of the latest tech fad. (FYI, I make 175k in the mid-west with 40hr work weeks and a 10 min commute, 5 weeks PTO, great healthcare)

> staffed with below-average IQ people

> I'm going to be working nights and weekends for at least a year

I find it highly amusing that you're complaining about coworkers being unintelligent then following it up with "I'm going to spend the majority of my free time giving free labour to a trillion dollar company for a year"

Do you think that’s because Amazon is a lesser company?

I work at Amazon and I’m depressed as hell because of it - not because the work is bad, but because you people think people like me are subhuman. I’ve studied leetcode for years but apparently my IQ is just too low to get into a better company - what should I do? Is my career over, or should I just accept being considered a subhuman for the rest of my life?

I don't work at Amazon and never have, so take my opinions with a grain of salt. I have worked at multiple other "FAANG"-caliber organizations, so add a few more grains.

Let's start with the obvious: "FAANG" was a term coined by financial types, not technical types, based on stock valuations rather than any particular technical merits. Exactly what companies are in it are controversial - Microsoft has the pedigree and the culture, they just didn't have the stock price (at that time). Netflix hires smart people but has never been in the same league as the rest in my personal opinion - they're too small and they have only one product.

Now, back to your question. If I had to guess, it's primarily about stigma. If I was working at Amazon, I would be fully aware of their reputation for abusive employee treatment, grinding fresh college graduates into a burnt out pulp faster than their RSUs can vest, poor work life balance, and so on. I'd be tired of answering the same questions about all of the above. I'd be aware that everyone already has their opinions about Amazon, that what I say isn't going to change much, and would probably deflect in the hope of getting interesting responses before everyone inevitably notices that my question lines up with all the feedback they've heard from their former-Amazon friends about the sad state of the internal tech stack, the working conditions, etc.

Basically, all of this seems to wind down into the fact that Amazon engineers are lesser and less worthy than everyone else and that even Amazon engineers know about this.

Why the hell should I even continue if that's the case? I make a pittance and everyone in society thinks of me as a untermensch.

Hold up.

Let's keep it in perspective here. "Worthy" of what? Dignity? Respect? Every human is worthy of those things.

I don't work FAANG, never even gotten a callback interview. I am a decent software engineer at a small company. I do pretty boring things, in pretty boring tech. I don't even understand how our k8s deploy works. I have to imagine your "pittance" of a salary at Amazon is higher than mine.

But none of that is embarrassing to me. It's just a job. It's not something that defines who I am. I clock out at my 8 hour mark and I go do things I love with people I love.

Comparison is the thief of joy. You aren't measured against anyone else, least of all other FAANG employees here showing off the best side of themselves. Be proud of yourself, and don't let your job define you. You are worth more as a human than your job title, and certainly the company you work for.

I don't know that you should continue since it is severely affecting you but I doubt that focusing on other people's tier rankings of Amazon engs is healthy or beneficial in any way. A lot of people overdo the whole "don't listen to what other people say" (external judgments can be valuable & insightful), but naturally it's possible to overdo the opposite.

AFAICT, Amazon has a terrible reputation because they are abusive and are known to hire-to-fire. If you don't feel abused and you've stuck around long enough to be confident that you weren't just hired to fill a firing quota, then these criticisms don't really apply.

Basically all big companies are large enough to offer a mix of good & bad experiences, prevailing reputation is going to be an average of that mix. But your own experience isn't an average, you don't have to measure it against some public reputation. Public reputation is for outsiders, it's for people to forecast what outcomes are likely before joining. It's not for you. When you can see sunny skies with your own eyes, you don't look at the weather forecast.

I intentionally didn't say anything about the engineers/ICs at Amazon. Amazon does some things incredibly well, and their culture and practices have clearly delivered some impressive results. It clearly has a number of good employees. I have friends as well as former and current colleagues who previously worked there. They're good people.

My comments were centered on the company's management structure, performance incentives, and business model.

> Maybe therapy can help with this.

Or mediation. OP seems to be blind to what they have.

An 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).

I’ve been at a couple FANG companies in my career. Generally I worked with extremely intelligent people, but I did sometimes work with people who didn’t care… not that this makes it any better.

Are you able to switch teams? Can you find or take ownership of a specific part of a project that’ll keep you sane and motivated? Are you able to fix the specific tooling on your team or for your project that you don’t like?

Is the tooling really backwards 10 years, or is it that you’re unfamiliar with it and just out of your comfort zone?

This!

I've also worked with people at both FAANG and non-FAANG where the issue is motivation and not "intelligence", so I would frame it to myself as that.

Depending on the company, you might be able to switch sooner once you have your first performance rating. Most FAANG companies try to have managers support what's going to give you lasting longevity at the company, not necessarily on the team.

My first advice is "f*ck the haters" here saying you shouldn't judge your coworkers. You absolutely should.

With that out of the way: Do you want to become a leader? Do you want to lead these people? Is it realistic to do so? If you are their better than this might be a good way to handle it.

If you are unable or unwilling to lead them, then you should probably transfer out asap. They'll pull you down, and you will notice it happen and you will resent them for it.

Your post wreaks of working at Amazon. I hate to tell you, but Amazon is the lowest hanging fruit of all FAANGs. They hire and fire at above average rates to try to find the best and then bait the rest to stay on with stock.

If you're at Amazon and you think things are going to get better, let me tell you, they aren't. Find a way out immediately unless you're okay basically moving forward with the same schizo management and dev policies.

Hope you find some work you enjoy!

> I've told this to lots of people who work in other division (that I can trust) and they've said the easiest thing is to just accept it as it is and coast. I've never done that in my career and don't think I could do that.

This is one of the reasons I usually disqualify people with long stints at FAANG on their resume.

If you plan to get back into startups, you may not want to stick around for too long. Another option is to jump to another FAANG where maybe you’ll be lucky to find better people/culture.

> I'm on a team that... is staffed with below-average IQ people.

I would definitely not want to work with you.

Has your experience been with startups entirely? I wonder if that is the thing here.

I think perhaps you maybe just weren't exposed to 'older' companies in the past and mostly worked in greenfield type situations?

>there's just too much to fix.

Welcome to any company that isn't a startup? Debt, tech, or otherwise (processes, etc) will exist if a company is old enough. That's just how it is, read up on Google enough and they've reworked their own systems numerous times when things didn't work anymore as they grew.

Smart companies, dumb companies, everyone accumulate debt as old systems don't do the thing right anymore. That's not wrong, that's just life. At those startups you worked at, everyone was laying the foundation for that and maybe just didn't know it ;)

Also I wouldn't assume that people are dumb because they don't want to fix it all... they maybe know, just also know it won't all get fixed / isn't worth it by pounding out weekends and nights all the time. I'd be wary of thinking 'these people are stupid / won't put in the work' when it might be just that they aren't going to kill themself fixing it all.

Lotta assumptions on my part here, just some food for thought.

From a manager point of view:

In your shoes I would make a decision to either fix/improve the situation or leave immediately.

If you decide for the former then make sure you have support from your management and own that decision. Be the one who turned the subpar division around. If it is as bad as you say you can hardly screw it up any worse. That's a privileged position to start from - difficult to fail.

I doubt your colleagues are really below average IQ - but perhaps their skills could be better. So teach them. Be the leader and mentor they likely never had. Have patience and build a team.

Fix the high impact, low effort problems first. Get some fast successes - they inspire and breed appetite for more. Don't exhaust your resources. Chip away one small problem at a time. It adds up faster than you think.

Create a vision for where you want to be in one year. Communicate that goal at every opportunity. Believe in it and other people will believe as well. It doesn't matter if you reach it within an arbitrary deadline - it matters that it exists in the first place.

Whatever you do, don't coast.

One possibility not mentioned is to connect with people working on other teams at the company and look for ways to build bridges. At Google I had a 20% project that got another team interested in working with me, so that’s where I transferred after a while.

Trying to turn a team around by working really hard seems like a good way to burn yourself out. Whether the team succeeds is likely beyond your control. Be helpful where you can, but let the manager worry about it.

It’s hard to tell much from a single comment, but referring to team members as “low IQ” seems like a warning sign that you might need to work on your people skills. Sure, you’re disappointed, but that’s not their fault so be careful not to use that as an excuse to take it out on them with the excuse of “raising standards” or some other justification like that. Been there, regretted being a jerk.

"staffed with below-average IQ people"

I don't think anyone is in the position to judge other IQ's especially co-workers. These people passed the same interview loop as you. Just puts them in the same "IQ" bracket as you. Maybe they also feel the same way as you and don't want to put their effort in trying to turn this team around and just want to coast and switch later on. You need to get off your high horse and try to understand the motivations of the team by talking to them individually and bringing stuff up in standups/meetings and suggest ways to improve. Work with your manager. Maybe you can be the one who can turn this team around without burning out yourself. In the end, its just a job and trick is to not take everything personally.

The job market in this field is pretty strong right now. Go somewhere else. There are lots of funded startups and smaller companies recruiting.

It is not weird to churn around early in your career to find the right fit. Try not to do it too much but one or two rapid hops on a CV is not strange.

Did you do your research before picking this team? Did you interview the manager and the team members?

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of teams at some of these companies. They are not all bad. Do your research. And put yourself on one you would enjoy.

I have analogous experience working on projects/organizations that have experienced potential terminal neglect, though not at FAANGs. Probably I'd accept that your hours will be longer than acceptable, if that's a tradeoff you can handle. What you get in return is avoidance of the feeling that you spend all your time accomplishing nothing.

From there, it's building relationships, documenting what gets accomplished, and trying to meet people where they are so that they can maybe get something done (and not break other things.)

That's from a managing perspective, but if you are determined to not coast, that may be what you'll be doing.

You won't be able to change much, in my opinion. So you have to choose whether you stay and do it their way, or go.

There's a lot to be said about your situation, but I've found that oftentimes the only way to actually figure out if a job is for you is to try it out. I have had jobs in the past which looked really good from the outside, and I even got people recommending the employer and the team, and then when I started, it became painfully obvious that the place was nowhere near as good as expected. The opposite is actually less common in my experience - if if feels wrong and if people are telling you the company is not great, it probably isn't.

There's a reason why people like working at large and reputable companies. For anyone reading your CV in the years to come, a few years spent at such a company would look impressive. You do get the benefits you mentioned, like stability and salary, so that's a net positive in your current situation. Spending a bit of time there, maybe 1-2 years would definitely not set you back too far anyway, in terms of tech, experience, etc. so it might not be as bas as you imagine it.

Then, on the opposite side, if you really hate it now, maybe you won't start liking it down the line and it could be better if you throw in the towel sooner rather than later. I've had jobs where I was unpleasantly surprised at the start, then went through periods of liking my job and then hating it and then back to liking it, etc. All in all, when I look back, I tend to remember the better things, but I can also fully remember how awful it felt at times. If the primary reason for getting into the job was that you'd work on hard problems with top talent, and there's no way to get that in the near future, then why stay there at all? The current job market would probably allow you to find something very quickly.

It's really about how you feel about the job, I think. It won't probably hurt to start looking around for better opportunities, without rushing it. It does not sound like an emergency. Plus, this way you'd give it some chance at least. It's tough to be at a job which you don't like and it's all about figuring your priorities and sticking to them.

I don't think there's any shame in rage-quitting a FAANG company.

I was once in a high-profile, ambitious open-source (but not FLOSS) project which had much the same NIH syndrome as you're experiencing, but didn't have the staff/budget to maintain their tooling properly and I hated it to the point where I got myself fired, because I didn't have the integrity to quit on my own.

If you can change something, try. If you notice that it's futile, quit.

I can tell you from experience that trying to suffer through something while having no agency is really really really bad for your mental health.

"and is staffed with below-average IQ people."

What makes you suspect this? Even if the hiring process is full of BS, that BS usually requires a higher IQ to learn and deal with like LeetCode, right?

I work for a FAANG-like company right now, and used to work for Apple, and worked for startups too. Some thoughts.

• Engineers in large tech companies are neither better nor worse engineers than in startups on average. They just work on different things.

• Large tech companies are a lot more heterogeneous than it looks at first. I had a great experience with talented and respectful people at Apple, while a friend of mine was in another engineering division also at Apple, and… not so much. It’s so large, it can’t be the same throughout the company. It wouldn’t be surprising that your team is struggling to hire quality talent, but some others have an easier time, for all kinds of reasons.

• But each company does have some common cultural traits you’re likely to find throughout all its teams though. My current company takes a lot about the importance of work-life balance, while Apple told us at bootcamp on day 1 that we’d be working our asses off. In both cases, it turned out true.

So, one FAANG might be wrong for you, but another FAANG might be better. And one team in a FAANG might be wrong for you, but another team in the same FAANG might be better.

One reason I like larger companies is because once you’re in, they’re so large that it’s easy to switch to another role all the while having a lot of insider information about what you’re getting into, way more than if you were to switch companies. But yeah, a lot of the time they want to keep you on one team for a little bit first, so at least they’re getting some ROI on their efforts to find you.

You are on a bad team it seems. I wouldn’t blame your teammates and look at how you got there. They are probably better than you realize but motivation can play a huge role in interactions and performance.

You’ve said in a comment you have been at startups hiring and building teams. Those are growing teams. You are used to growing, building, and acting with accountability. Now you are on a team with turnover, that probably isn’t growing. Why? Is the team going to be shut down because of low value? Is it in a purely a maintenance function that will just be starved of resources? Is there bad leadership that can’t fix problems and has unrealistic expectations?

Likely whatever is wrong is out of your control. Don’t burn out trying to save something you might not even understand. Do a good job and try to learn “big org”. Look for a different team. Focus on extracurriculars. And find a new job at the year mark if it doesn’t get better (or earlier if you have too). Good luck.

Cracking up at the response to this thread. The comments here show how desperately tech workers need the validation of being in the Gifted Class and if you insinuate there's a culture of stupidity in FAANG they fall to pieces.

No comment on your predicament, best of luck and look for anybody smart and hustling around you that you can latch on to.

Honestly the reason why I’m so depressed/sometimes suicidal is because I’m part of a FANG that everyone considers to be stupid and poor. I wish people ever had given me any validation.

OPs fixation on IQ to denigrate their coworkers is pretty scummy though.

Lots of people are suicidal because of real world, intractable problems. Then if you say you are suicidal, they say you just have a mental health issue, not "a real problem."

It's one of the suckiest things humans currently do to each other on a regular basis in an "evil is prosaic" kind of way.

Things will be very team dependent at large companies.

I worked at some seemingly boring defense contractors on paper, but had a really cool team, and worked on a hard problem set... We all gelled well and everyone was smart.

But I also know if really dysfunctional teams at large companies that would otherwise sound exciting and interesting on paper...

> "a FAANG"

What's that? There's only five of 'm, just give us a name. ;)

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

By all means raise these concerns and suggest improvements, but ultimately if a FAANG wants to waste its money and be stupid, let them be and enjoy part of that money. In a small startup where you have significant financial upside in it succeeding my advice would be different, but here just lay back and enjoy the paychecks.

Given your description of the team it seems like you should be able to outperform them without any trouble.

Can you be more specific about the problems? This is some combination of:

* Different companies do things differently and you should have some humility about the way things are done here

* There's definitely a lot of cruft that can accumulate at larger companies, but the question is how much is it stopping you from being productive and getting the work done

* There's definitely sh*t teams at FAANGs, and by definition you're more likely to land at one coming in because of the turnover

See if you can transfer internally. If not, quit. I suspect that even if they're not excited about you transferring, if you're willing to quit over it, they'll make something happen.

Teams at large companies are all different (small companies, too), and the way this reads, I don't think you'll be effective with any amount of toughing it out, and it will end up being more stressful than it's worth.

> I feel like I've made a terrible decision and don't know what to do next.

My advice is straightforward. First, stay in the position until an adequate amount of time has passed so it won't raise eyebrows on your resume. Second, begin looking for other work doing what you want to do, using this job as a stepping stone.

You took a chance, it didn't work out as expected. That's life. Move on to the next thing!

Is everyone coasting and there is a lot of turnover? This seems to be somewhat conflicting. Is there a lot of turnover because it is so boring people are quiting? I find this unlikely. I used to work in the government and most people are pretty content coasting, especially if there is a faang salary to go with it.

If people are getting pip'ed or fired it seems like it might be difficult to coast.

You don't have to "coast", you only have to learn to leave the stress and problems at work when the day ends. Work to fix things by day, try to find some enjoyment in it, be kind, and leave the troubles at the office when evening comes.

If you can do this and manage to turn the project around you will have achieved far more than knowing the latest toolsets.

Put in some time and get out. It will help your resume, but not your soul.

I have been working with a FAANG recently, one that builds EVERYTHING in house. Almost comical. There are great engineers all over the place, but no cohesive strategy or overarching sense for product outside of a couple of niches. Not a great situation.

I would say just coast for a couple of years, cash the paycheck, try to find some time on the side to do your own building/learning. Then leave and use the "FAANG" line on your resume to command a better rate/salary at your next gig.

Also, "below-average IQ people" really? that seems unnecessary.

https://acelerate.io/ - building an OS for restaurants, founded by former DoorDash employee. Lots of scaling, data modeling, and reverse engineering challenges right now.

We just raised $14.4mm led by Sequoia: https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/14/acelerate-raises-14-44m-se...

Our jobs board: https://boards.greenhouse.io/acelerate

I recall working for a company who programmed POS in Basic... The place was 20 years late (in any domain) and dysfunctionnal. YET, it is still in business today and making money on a regular basis.

As for me I quit, because I could not focus on my role and instead focused on the environment.

Welcome to big tech corp paranoia. Enjoy your stay!

But seriously don't hold on to something that makes no sense to you whatsoever. I'm pretty sure management won't turn the boat for you especially at the scale of your complaints so think about your exit strategy.

Exactly, like I paraphrase it to "young colleagues":

Large companies / countries do not exist, they're made up out of small groups and picking the right group makes the difference between awesome and hell.

You will not find a large company with stellar players only.

I've worked at these companies for several years, gotten promoted, shuffled around internally, etc...it can be frustrating and demoralizing for sure. But it can be rewarding too, and I saw plenty of people coast without stressing too much.

Here are my survival tips. Tl;Dr, calm down and try to be positive at work.

* Things are never as serious as they seem, and deadlines are rarely as solid as they seem. These companies have inertia and capital, and they understand that estimates are not promises.

* Check in with your teammates regularly, and avoid giant complicated code reviews. Be ready to change direction quickly, and don't worry too much about throwing away a few days of work if a better solution presents itself.

* Try to get a feel for how the in-house tools work. Even a basic understanding of how large companies handles things like deployments might be valuable in the future.

* Ignore the politics. Try to help your peers, and be nice to them even when they're annoying. They may or may not be "low-IQ", but as long as your teammates feel like you help them out, you should get good annual reviews without needing to work more than 40hrs/wk.

* If you want to transfer internally, be up-front about it with your manager. In-house transfer applications aren't always private.

It’s just a 2 year stint my guy

You’re not married or anything close to that and you don’t have an hour commute anymore either

Maybe don’t work nights and weekends. The rest of your team lowers the bonus performance expectations, so just coast and collect yours

You're getting a lot of heat from HN about the IQ comment here, instead of being give actual helpful advice or given a charitable reading of the intent behind your statement. (Is it just me, or has HN's quality dropped somewhat significantly over the last ~1.5 years?)

My experience is similar to yours, however. I have managed, led, and been a part of teams at small startups for the last 10 years of my career. I recently joined a name brand, large tech company (not FAANG, but maybe a half step down from there. They certainly think of themselves as a FAANG-type company).

I've had the same experience as you.

There's much more money. Our compensations are higher. The technology choices are more cutting edge and expensive.

But the toolset my team was using to actually develop, is worse than what I've used for the last decade.

The people I interviewed with ranged from extremely intelligent and skilled, to the sort of rude know-it-all engineering type you hear about related to faang interviews. The interview process was so difficult that I was on track to fail it, until an upper manager reached out and personally interviewed me to see what was going wrong, and corrected the process.

But my team, while great people I enjoy working with, are a very, very considerable step down in terms of skill, ability, and knowledge from the last team I managed. And those guys were making easily 50k+ / year less than my current team members.

I also thought I was joining to solve A+ hard problems, and I'm also having a bit of a hard time with it.

I started at the beginning of 2021, I'm taking a couple of approaches, mentally to this. Firstly, I'm not leaving until my stock options finish vesting. So that means I'm in this for the long haul.

Second, the fact that I'm so much more knowledgable than the rest of my team, I hope, should set me up for promotions down the line. I think part of what's going on here, is that this company is so_much_larger than the startups I've worked for in the past, means that ICs genuinely don't get to see most of the truly difficult problems, because true difficulty gets spread out over so many more people, and solved by people higher up the totem pole than a lowly IC. FWIW, this desire has made me really dislike the current Covid WFH arrangement. As great as WFH is, getting promoted is so much harder when you lack consistent facetime with the people around you.

Thirdly, I really, really, really blame the modern FAANG inspired Leetcode interview process. My teammates clearly have the ability to solve leetcode style questions. And in the blue moon opportunity that such a question comes up in code, it is usually solved pretty quickly. But actually important coding skills? I will be keeping this in mind as much as possible when I vet out companies when doing future interviews, and I very much hope this industry fad changes over time.

Fourth: the fact that I can develop so much quicker and cleaner than my coworkers, means that I can take advantage of the fact that this company has many more different types of technology than I would be exposed to at a start up. I will be spending that extra time bumping up my own skillset, so as to be a more desirable candidate once my options vest.

However, all of the above is specific to one assumption: I ultimately like this company, and enjoy the job. I am not working nights and weekends at a company I hate. So if that's the position you find yourself in, I would suggest leaving. The mere fact that something is a FAANG doesn't automatically mean its a good job. Weigh your income vs your options vs your happiness, and make a decision. The "FAANG" title holds very little weight in that decision, except as a good-looking line-item on your resume.

>just accept it as it is and coast

This is why you go to faang. Take the money.

i would like to propose indexed syntax for FAANG. example:

"I work for FAANG[2]" or "I work for FAANG[0]".

would be so much more fun naming your employer !

> 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.

"I've told this to lots of people who work in other division (that I can trust) and they've said the easiest thing is to just accept it as it is and coast"

The Big Head character from Silicon Valley is again proved to be (like all the characters) spot-on accurate. Mike Judge is sorely underappreciated.

My $0.02 advice: you seem smart, hard-working, and self-motivated. Become a consultant and be your own boss. Use the FAANG creds to demand a high rate. It's a market, and you can leverage your abilities as services you can offer. Work it to your advantage.

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.