[0xy]

I've heard from numerous people that FAANGs hire talented engineers and give them busy work or projects that never launch in a way to keep them from working for competitors. Is this actually true?

Has anyone seen this in practice?

[solarmist]

Yup. It’s not intentional or malicious, but it’s the end result.

You have teams that grow because the manager find work to do and no project is ever closed as finished or mature so tons of engineers are wasting time making incremental improvements to systems that already fulfill all requirements.

You also have these engineers see this and decide they can reinvent the system better because they’re so immersed and knowledgeable about it and boom you have huge numbers of worthless initiatives the size of which depends on how persuasive the lead is.

[quickthrower2]

Interesting - it is almost a paradox how “inefficient” the most valuable companies are.