Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by deanCommie 26 days ago
You're not wrong, but it's also so sad.

FAANG used to be the _dream_. Change the world. Work on groundbreaking tech. Solve harder problems than anywhere else. Get Paid incredibly well.

Then I guess a generation focused exclusively on that last part flooded the zone. I still believe that The Great Resignation of 2021 did more harm to our industry than COVID or any interest rate or VC changes.

It polluted the brains of most of the people in our industry from a missionary mindset to a mercenary, and it decimated big company's established cultural memory all to prop up a bunch of unicorns who will probably all slowly die over the next decade.

So now half of the people can't get a job, and the half that can are miserable. This was true BEFORE AI.
2 comments
smsm42 26 days ago
It's just a natural progression. When the company is a startup working on a new exciting tech it's chasing the dream and changing the world. When it's a behemoth employing 200k people, it's impossible for all of them to be chasing the dream. Probably like 90% of them would be doing extremely boring "keeping the lights on" tasks and ensuring this gargantuan machine does not go to pieces under it's own weight. It still can pay incredibly well, but it won't be exciting frontier work anymore. It just can't be, 200k people company can't move with the agility of 200 people company.
link
wahnfrieden 26 days ago
Interesting choice to blame FAANG demise on its workers
link
nixon_why69 25 days ago
Its not like the CEOs unilaterally said "we want to suck now". It's the cumulative effect of many people optimizing for the promotion process within the company and then coaching their mentees to do the same.
link
keybored 23 days ago
Are not the CEOs responsible for cumulative/emergent effects?
link
nixon_why69 23 days ago
They should be but its very hard. It's a culture and you can't exactly order a chain of command that grew into it and hold all the levers to just he different.

I'm not lionizing Sundar Pichai here, just saying the cumulative attitudes of 10k L7/L8 is really what sets the culture.

link
zem 25 days ago
I was going to post a more extended rant but really yeah, this says it all
link