Could also be why you can't find a job. You may be too expensive, and they're looking for engineers in the sweet spot of cheap/can keep the machine running.
FANG like companies also do a lot of things different then most other, especially smaller companies, so it's not that uncommon for small companies to hesitate to hire someone directly coming from FANG.
Then for lower paying jobs a lot of people are hesitant to hire "overqualified" people as they expect them to jump ship the moment they find something better, i.e. no FANG people.
Then team leads no matter which job/industry often avoid hiring someone perceived more qualified then them, like e.g. from FANG.
Or in other words in an economy where you might need to be happy with a less well paying job which you also might be perceived to be overqualified for having a long term FANG employment without an employment afterwards isn't necessary a good thing...
> FANG like companies also do a lot of things different then most other,
As a hiring manager, this is a factor that weighs heavily in my mental math. My experience with ex-BigTech engineers has been that they tend towards wanting to make everything to match their BigTech experience. But they often don't have the pragmatism to understand that X is a good pattern at BigTech because *of the size of BigTech*. Have had way too many conversations of the form, "Yes, that is objectively better. But at our scale, the value add does not warrant the effort involved". Or "there's no need for these 15 layers of indirection because there's 5 of us, not 5000".
Obviously this is a stereotype and doesn't apply to everyone. But that's no different than how people have a positive stereotype of ex-BigTech employees being sharp.
i got into an argument with a bigtech employee (outside of work, in a social setting) that senior engineers should spend 25% of their time mentoring junior hires.
he literally could not understand that a small company can't afford to do this.
not only that, he also could not understand that small companies doesn't even make junior hires. there's nobody to mentor!
and i would guess this guy has like a top 1% iq, whatever that is.
If you can’t afford ~25% of your week educating junior hires, then you shouldn’t have junior hires.
It is a sin of the industry to not train new folks, and I would argue that many “senior engineers” do not know how to mentor juniors because they don’t see it as a priority.
I was heavily mentored during my time in small businesses with limited resources and profit. I hope others get that experience too.
I know people on HN seem to think it is, but the people here are a tiny subset of the people in the real world, even in the tech area of California. I really doubt it's a representitive view.
There is always an element of "let's see how low we can get" in mainstream IT, since people outside tech view tech as a cost center and not a profit center, which devalues candidates.
Then for lower paying jobs a lot of people are hesitant to hire "overqualified" people as they expect them to jump ship the moment they find something better, i.e. no FANG people.
Then team leads no matter which job/industry often avoid hiring someone perceived more qualified then them, like e.g. from FANG.
Or in other words in an economy where you might need to be happy with a less well paying job which you also might be perceived to be overqualified for having a long term FANG employment without an employment afterwards isn't necessary a good thing...