[edmundsauto]

I hear you about the hypercompetitive perspective. I'm 20 years older and can't believe the stress that we put learners through.

If I can offer my voice - focus on doing some real shit. Don't worry about the career ladder - find experiences where you accomplished some real goals. Getting on the FAANG career ladder too early is probably very limiting. The big differentiator is whether you can take on accountability for making decisions; this requires practice (and luck) => experience.

Don't stress it. People told me this when I was a recent college grad in the mid 2000's. Develop your own heuristic of learning and growing versus stagnating. On the outside-of-FAANG-world, there are so many more opportunities for growth than a kept engineer can imagine.

[lovich]

> Getting on the FAANG career ladder too early is probably very limiting

I can’t help but at chuckle at this with how big a barrier there is in comp between faang and non faang companies. You can get in if you spend months studying again or have a job that legitimately has you using comp sci on a day to day basis but for most folks they are gonna forget the skills needed to get a faang job shortly after college if they don’t get into one

[lumost]

I started at a FAANG as a senior swe with 8 years of experience. I did not get a comp sci degree, nor did I start my first job as SWE.

Just keep working towards your goals. When I started out I made a point to work an extra hour or two every day. If there was no work to do, I would study a topic of interest.

[lovich]

Not for nothing man, but an extra hour or two of work every day over the course of years is a high barrier.

Good for you that you made it, but it’s not so trivial a bar that I think telling people to not worry about getting into a faang early in their career is good advice if they care about money or career progression

[nvarsj]

Indeed. For lots of us, 2 hours a day is basically all the free time we have with family and other obligations. Spending all your free time for 6 months-year is a pretty brutal proposition, not to mention a huge ROI risk if you don't get the job at the end. OTOH, I think FAANG companies see this is a feature of the process (it filters out people who have a lot of external obligations).

[wdb]

How much comp sci do you use on a daily basis at a FAANG company though? Especially, if you are working on front end stuff / UI work

[lovich]

Does it matter? If you’ve got the faang title on your resume it makes it easier to get into other faangs or companies in general and you don’t have to bootstrap as hard on the comp sci.

It matters in the reverse because heavy comp sci tests are what the faangs lean on, on top of all the other interview rounds