[rhombocombus]

Not my thing personally (at least not today). I could buy a lot more toys and BS and retire earlier if I took one of those jobs, but my already generous (not by FAANG standards) programmer salary is enough and it comes along with a sane schedule and reasonable work expectations. The value in this is I get more time outside of work to enjoy my life, which is worth more than an extra pile of lucre when I already get by pretty comfortably.

[pb7]

I don't know where this misguided implication comes from that FAANG doesn't have a sane schedule or reasonable work expectations. The people that work a lot do so because they're some of the most passionate in the industry and enjoy working a lot as a result. On average, I would speculate FAANG is less stressful and more reasonable than other companies. The reason you may think that is not the case is that negative stories stick to the same "brand" (i.e. "FAANG") that employees hundreds of thousands of people whereas a story about a random mom'n'pop shop doesn't register on your radar because there are many of them.

[LolWolf]

I would describe FAANG (in my and many friends' experiences) as "adult daycare." Not in a bad way, mind you, but very much "get your homework done and go have your free time after." (This excludes higher management and architects, etc., of course. I mean this as a middle-of-the-road SWE on a decent team.)

I'm not quite sure where the GP got stressful, but it is soul-sucking if you expect your work to be interesting, impactful, and creative, which doesn't really happen apart from a few core or research teams. There is a ton of piping and rewriting of frameworks going on all the time, even when it need not be extremely useful. This is the main reason I found it thoroughly drab—even though it is likely that the lines of code I wrote there are likely to touch many orders of magnitude more people than anything else I ever work on for the rest of my life.

I guess that's just how it goes, though.

[pb7]

I fully agree. It is soul-sucking at times, but nowhere near as soul-sucking as the life I came from and I will never stop being grateful for that. If I want more excitement from working, I can always pick up the exact work of my personal interest on the side (but I don't, because there are so many other interesting things to do outside of software). I'd rather have great security and quality of life from the work that puts a roof over my head.

[LolWolf]

Absolutely! There's a kind of beautiful freedom about it, too.

A number of people (myself included) seek to align work and passion all in one, which is fine, except it's certainly not the only (or, indeed, even close to "best") way to live and work. I've been lucky because my passion is in a field that now actually has applications in both theory and practice, after 50-or-so years of lying in relative academic obscurity.

The point is: if you care primarily about things that aren't your work (and this is true for literally 99.9% of people in the world, and is probably much healthier than the alternative) then FAANG is phenomenal in every possible way. The perks, compensation, and freedom to do pretty much anything are incredible. Quant (which nets around the same, if not slightly more profit) certainly does not fall in this category, due to its insane hours, and most other jobs with sane hours and good work-life balance don't pay nearly (read: really even close to) as much, or aren't as secure, or have anywhere close to the perks. It really is about the best gig you can get, if you can swing it.

On the other hand, for the weird, obsessive .1% of people (e.g., me) who would be happy to work all day in their mother's basement so long as it's interesting work, then FAANG (or, at least, many teams within it) can feel almost beside the point. Which is also fine!

I guess the point is that it all depends on what you want out of work and out of, well, not-work!

[SZJX]

This comment chain is well said. There are more likely to be various random events that screw you over or suddenly put extra pressure on you at smaller companies, not to mention the lack of perks and compensation. Recently an analogy that I've come up with is index fund investing: Sure one can attempt all sorts of creative investment combinations/maneuvers, and sometimes they do make it big, but in the end, the most reliable and care-free way to grow your wealth is simply to follow the mainstream advice and go for the index funds, even though they "sound" boring af. They are recommended by the mainstream for a reason just like how people flock to big tech companies for a reason (at least this still applies in our current day and age). I've had some alternative ideas about my career with various excuses (e.g. I'd only work with a functional language), but increasingly I realize that I should probably just quit all the tossing around and go for such a path instead. It's similar with my investments: Had I not performed various stupid active trades here and there and just put my money into the index funds, or even just parked my money in cryptocurrency and held on to them, I would have got amazing, carefree returns.

[SZJX]

Feels to me there are a lot of stereotypes and misconceptions about FAANG floating around in this thread, which I guess is not exactly surprising given the type of post this is (criticism of the "broken" interview process). It almost feels like some people find excuses to not even try, or have some sort of sour grape mentality/avert their eyes from the issue, if they feel themselves unlikely to pass the interview, even though they haven't spent the time required to master the algorithms questions at all. (Of course, there might also be people who simply find it quite hard to find such time, as mentioned in the article, which is understandable.)

My understanding is that those companies themselves also freely acknowledge that interviewing is hard. Due to the sheer volume of applicants, fast algorithms questions is the most reasonable compromise they can find at the moment. If you were in the position of the interviewer, it would also be hard for you to come up with an alternative that works for all sides involved. So instead of complaining about this reality, one needs to face up to the challenge.

It is actually a paradox: You seem to be unfree and doing something pointless when you were grinding interview questions. But after you've made it, it would suddenly be very easy for you to have a lot of freedom and security in your life with all the capital you have accumulated. In a sense it's like how college entrance exams work. It's unfortunate but again, if no better practical solution could be found at the moment, one just has to face the reality and do it. It could even be fun. Talking about "ideals" wouldn't get you anywhere in the real world.

Regarding work-life balance, perks and life quality, just as the comments who replied to you pointed out, working for big tech is most likely one of the best options you can have out there, compared to many smaller-scale companies.

The one valid thing I think you may get by not working for FAANG is complete freedom in shaping what you're working on. However this is hard anywhere unless you're the founder/executive of the company yourself. If that's what you're after and you have the safety to pursue it, sure. However, in terms of working as a common employee, there are very few possible reasons why a place could be better than big tech.