| Unrealistic expectations of the employer. They try to mimic fads from FAANG companies and end up misapplying things. Just because a framework/idea works for them doesn't mean it will work for the rest of us. Our company has moved to developer chapter leads as managers, and it's a mess. They have no real power, they have no background/insider info on product strategy, they dont have any better idea of what we are doing since they are on a different team, and they are split between doing their normal dev work and people leadership. Maybe it works for tech companies, but we aren't a tech company. We have started doing ridiculous code screens or whiteboarding, even for internal postings. Why not just ask my manager and tech lead about my code, or look in the repo for my recent commits? That's going to be much better than some 1hr code screen. Don't even get me started about the 50 bullet point list of expected skills/competencies in job postings. I also love the ones where we want 5 years experience in a language that's only existed for 3 years. The company only wants experts, yet does nothing to contribute to developing resources into experts. I'll be honest, I'm not a FAANG level dev. But these companies want to pay less than half of a FAANG salary and somehow expect their devs to be almost as good. |
What FAANG does get right is there are very smart people designing the frameworks, tooling, and standards through which everyone else delivers their software. This means that a low skill dev can be amplified in terms of delivery, and can be easily stopped from breaking production.