I joined a FAANG and it is awful

"staffed with below-average IQ people"

I'm not sure why your co-workers' IQ is your concern. To come out of the gate with a comment like this sounds like you have a strong disdain for them.

Part of your reason for joining the company was the paycheck. I assume the checks aren't bouncing.

My advice is the same advice I would give to many people: Learn from your coworkers. Understand the problems that the team and the company face. Make incremental improvements.

If you really want to you can work late every day and at weekends. It's your choice. Bear in mind your job won't love you back.

> below-average IQ people.

..

> Any advice is appreciated.

Not shitting on your colleagues with this generation's phrenology would be a great start.

More generally, it sounds like you are starting with the idea that you're better and smarter than everyone you work with and only you can see the problems, as opposed to everyone you work with being (by and large) decent and hard working people who are making the best of a complicated situation. Learning about that situation, chesterton's fence etc, will be more productive that presuming everyone you work with is an idiot.

Leave?

I work for a FAANG, and have for a while. Maybe I have below average IQ, too, but I've met and had the pleasure of working with some of the smartest, hardest working, kindest people in my career here. Some assholes too, of course, but we're all human.

Everything is built in-house because it needs to solve problems at a scale that you've never worked at. Be humble. If the tooling is terrible, congrats! There's a bunch of impact in your future making the tooling better. And because it's a big company, it cares a lot about marginal productivity improvements like better tooling, and will reward you for it. That's pretty different than my experiences at startups that are struggling for survival.

Maybe you picked a bad team. That's a possibility, because large companies are less homogenous than startups. But that also means that there are good teams, whereas if you pick a bad startup the whole thing is bad. Sounds like you didn't do the homework you should have before choosing a team. Maybe, again, be humble and accept that you have things to learn, even if it's just how to see red flags prior to joining a team, and use what you've learned when choosing a team next time.

Good luck!

"A+ players solving hard problems"

Is this really what people think when joining a large company such as FAANG ? I mean not everyone can be an A player in a company with 1000s of employees, correct ? Also not every team is going to be solving hard problems. Someone has to do the dirty things. Isn't that understood ?

Not trying to shit on you OP but I would have tried to learn more about the team in interviews if possible or is that just not a thing with FAANG interviews ?

Ex-Navy & programmer here: It feels like I am pointing out the obvious, but FAANGs have big problems, way bigger than a startup, and I'm not referring to only the technology. They have big organizational problems, like managing an aircraft carrier. They need to hire the smartest people and pay them a lot of money to manage those problems. Not every problem is sexy and many people are needed in the engine room to keep the fresh water distillery running and the ship sewage system from clogging.

The U.S.'s $13 Billion Aircraft Carrier Has a Toilet Problem

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a319296...

> staffed with below-average IQ people.

This comment doesn't reflect well on you.

I've recently joined a FAANG as well, and I've been disappointed with the code quality and the tooling. I expected better. Yet I feel there are tons of things to learn, and there are definitely bright people there. If anything, it reminds us that it's not easy to build software.

Quit your whining and fix the damn problems. You sound like an entitled brat. If you're so smart compared to everyone else on your team, then you should have no problems fixing things. Why do you have to work nights and weekends? Are they asking you to? If not, then why put that on yourself? And even you work occasional nights and weekends, so what? Part of the joy of software development is the positive feedback loop of fixing something and moving on to the next broken thing. I did nights and weekends in the past because it was fun! I enjoyed problem solving.

As someone in a movie once said, "Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That's all it is. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem... and you solve the next one... and then the next. And if you solve enough problems, you get to come home"

Congrats on landing a FAANG position! As long as the environment isn't toxic, you can find a way to be content.

Use this as an opportunity to learn how to adjust your thinking so you can thrive personally in a challenging environment. You may never get to a point where you love it, but you can probably get to a place where you are successful and can focus on the positives.

Learn how to work well with challenging people. You'll encounter more of them later in your career. Again, adjust your thinking. These people almost certainly have their positive qualities. Work with those positive qualities and become a master at mitigating or avoiding their bad qualities.

As far as working nights and weekend goes... do you really have to do that? Are other team members doing that? Big companies are not like startups. All the things will never get fixed, and you simply need to do your best with things in a permanently semi-broken state.

I understand that you don't want to coast. You don't have to even if others are. Focus on doing an excellent job on your corner of the world. Your projects, your code, helping others, etc.. Worry less about the bigger picture.

Also remember that it's not forever. This is an investment in your future career.

I appreciate all the comments (even the criticism). In so many ways, this post has already helped me see things more clearly.

One final thought is that I know I can quit - that isn't the question. I could make more money (with less stability) consulting, or find a middle ground at a Series C+ company.

What I probably should have said in my OP is that quitting feels wrong. I've never quit a position after three months and this is honestly the first time everything is telling that quitting is the right decision. As dysfunctional as this team is, quitting would feel like letting them down, and it just isn't something I've done before.

But again, these comments have given me perspective and will make me give this more thought.

Don't try to fix everything. Pick small battles and things and fix them one by one.

You're not at a startup where "fix all the things ASAP or we die" is the driving force. Settle in and work on making things better, even if it's just to keep you in play as you investigate other options.

A year of improving a team would give you a solid foundation for an internal transfer, for example.

I've worked at two different FAANG companies, and have a different view than some of the other commenters here. It sounds like you want to grow, learn, and advance, and I don't think you'll be happy kicking back and coasting.

The first piece is that mobility is high between teams at almost every FAANG company. At my first one, I moved 3 months later because the initial team wasn't a great fit for me maintaining a lot of slow moving legacy systems. I moved to a team working on much more greenfield projects with more attention on the products themselves, and I thrived for several years. See what your options are to talk to other teams and move to one that aligns better with what you want to work on.

The other related piece to this is that because mobility is so high, there do tend to be certain teams or areas with higher turnover and lower quality hires in some cases. No one wants to work on hard to maintain and neglected products, most good engineers that start there move on, and so it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.

There are likely some extremely brilliant people to learn from at the company (even if not in your team), so try to seek out and find them in teams with openings. I agree it's easier to move after a year, but if the fit is really not right you can likely get an exception going to a team with an understanding manager (who you would enjoy working for anyways). Set up some non-formal meetings based on the internal job board and be open with all these experiences and concerns.

Finally, the internal toolset is a real challenge, but I've come to take a slightly less pessimistic view on it. First off, the internal tooling tends to be worse on an individual workflow level, but accepting it has largely been better for me than fighting it (in most but not all cases). It's slower than a modern toolset, but still usually productive once you embrace what it's good at. The flip side is there are usually good reasons it's evolved to where it is today. Some of these reasons have to do with the scale of how many teams are working together, and understanding that will help explain why it is what it is. The other reasons are just that some of these companies have now been around a long time, and shifting to something better would be quite painful organizationally, meaning it's not ideal but the alternative would also be painful for the organization at a whole. You're new to it, so are at the opposite end of that.

I've been in two FAANG companies and I can tell you know - go back to startups. I came from startups and couldn't wrap my head around how slow things are. In FAANG everything is promotion driven so people spend most of their energy reverse engineering the system and choosing work that will help them get promoted. It's a never ending, beautifully designed rat race. You will spend weeks on performance reviews, evaluations and other HR corporate mambo jumbo. If you spend more than 50% of your time on actual work you are lucky.

If you have a startup mindset you should go back to startups. You will be more productive, happy and grow faster.

Quit. I know someone who went to work for Google and quit immediately (like, I think she worked there a week?) to do something better... didn't even seem to affect their interest in re-recruiting her AFAIK. She ended up working there a second time when the company she was working at got bought by Google... she quit again within a year. FAANGs suck: at their best they pay you a lot to do nothing and at their worst they pay you just enough to make you willing to do something evil.

Take the money, max out 401k + after tax, save whatever you can after that, and get your fulfillment outside of work, just like the majority of other employees do. After a few years, you shouldn't need your FAANG job anymore.

If you wanted to work on something interesting, you should have stayed at a startup. You wanted to make bank, and this is the price.

> If I do want to stick this out and turn this team around, I'm going to be working nights and weekends for at least a year - there's just too much to fix.

Is it worth though? For whom are you fixing the issues? For the coworkers who will leave while you're still refactoring? For the charismatic boss? Your own personal pride? Also, is the work worth your overtime? If they staff "idiots", do they deserve your free time on the weekend?

I applaud you for being able to care so much in what you describe is a terrible team.

"Instead, I'm on a team that has and horrendous turnover and is staffed with below-average IQ people." "This company builds EVERYTHING in house, and the toolset is like going backwards in my career 10 years."

I am guessing this is either Amazon or Google. I would think that this is most likely Amazon ("horrendous turnover": 50% of people who join Amazon leave within the first 2 years). In LinkedIn you will routinely find people from Amazon showing their badges stating that they completed X+ number of years. Have you seen people from other places routinely doing this? That itself is a dead giveaway to the critical eye.

Btw, your IQ comparison is extremely derogatory. So please edit that out.

Everything you've said indicates you are working at Amazon.

Save all of the money and run away once you've lucked into a Google offer.

Go back to work for a startup? Large organisations are large beasts, with their own culture and way of working. Every project has tons of stakeholders and everything is moving slowly.

In my experience, you'll only really get to solve problems at a startup. At a FAANG-sized many decisions are likely made "by committee" or by some higher up, and your project is always at risk of getting blocked for political reasons.

If you enjoyed working at startups in the past, I'd go work for a new one that you're finding exciting!

So you've achieved a goal of yours, are getting excellent pay, and gotten a FAANG on your resume.

Don't kill yourself now working nights and weekends. But do take the time to evaluate what is important to you. You can probably get hired most places you'd care to work now, so...where is that? What makes a place ideal for you? What would you be willing to give up to make that happen?

I think cooling your heels there for a while is a given; that might be coasting, sure, but it also might be determining specific small areas within the company to pour yourself into to try and improve.

After you've been there a bit, see if things have improved, as you've gotten more context. If not, you're in a better position to move on; you've now got the FAANG on your resume, any recruiters you talk to will know not to lowball you, and you'll have spent time thinking about what actually makes you happy in a workplace and can look to seek it out.

But I will say, having worked in 5-6 companies now over a 12 year career, no place will have everything you want, and no place will stay the same. Figure out what is most important to you. It might be compensation and stability; it might be interesting problems, it might be something else. If it's either of those two, though, you may want to look outside of your main place of employ to figure out how to meet the other need; job for compensation, personal work for interesting problems, for instance. Or get permission for some moonlighting and take some contract work from some old contacts maybe.

It seems unlikely that your co-workers have low IQ, but it does go to show that doing well on algorithms and toy puzzles doesn't necessarily lead to an interesting job. It seems odd that you would be assigned to a team that didn't personally interview you - is this normal practice at FAANG companies?

Your co-workers may just be zoned out and collecting a paycheck - at some point the workload can become so impossible that you just don't care anymore. This is especially true if you don't care about a company's mission, product, or customers. Unfortunately the tech boom has led to high turnover at some places, and people just jumping to the next big salary instead of picking a good long term fit.

The tech industry is big enough that you can do what makes you happy - the big name places sometimes aren't a great fit. I've found a pretty good career working at mid-tier Fortune 500 companies. There a lot of good opportunities all across the US if you're willing to forgo SV salaries, know your stuff (and can learn new tech quickly), and focus on helping the business instead of the latest tech fad. (FYI, I make 175k in the mid-west with 40hr work weeks and a 10 min commute, 5 weeks PTO, great healthcare)

> staffed with below-average IQ people

> I'm going to be working nights and weekends for at least a year

I find it highly amusing that you're complaining about coworkers being unintelligent then following it up with "I'm going to spend the majority of my free time giving free labour to a trillion dollar company for a year"

OP joined Amazon without a doubt. (Build everything in house, working nights and weekends, rigid team-switching rules.) I just interviewed there and the onsite presented more red flags than a Soviet military parade. Would definitely recommend treating them somewhat differently from the other FANG companies

One piece of advice. It is easy to start with an existing team, product or company and immediately find things that in your opinion are done “wrong”. One of the fastest ways to alienate yourself is to come in with a sledgehammer and start trying to change everything after only a couple of months on the job. Step back and realize there is or was likely a good reason that certain choices were made. Try to really understand the why. Maybe that will change your opinion of some of the choices. Then armed with that understanding you can suggest and make improvements in a way that brings value to the team.

There is a middle ground between "working nights and weekends for at least a year" and "accept it as it is and coast". Why do you only consider the extremes? What's stopping you from improving things slowly without overworking yourself?

An established organization will work fundamentally differently from a startup. For some people, this is a hard transition to make.

If you want to actually make it work, you need to meet them halfway and assume that they know something about working in an established organization that you don't. Tossing out their institutional knowledge will likely be a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

This just may not be for you. After doing things a particular way, doing them a completely different way tends to be a trial by fire and most people don't want that and won't tolerate it if they don't have some personal crisis forcing the decision.

If you have other viable options that are more comfortable for you, there's no shame in pursuing those instead. If you don't, you need to spend less time feeling superior and more time trying to figure out how things actually work (as opposed to assuming your way is best in all things).

I’ve been at a couple FANG companies in my career. Generally I worked with extremely intelligent people, but I did sometimes work with people who didn’t care… not that this makes it any better.

Are you able to switch teams? Can you find or take ownership of a specific part of a project that’ll keep you sane and motivated? Are you able to fix the specific tooling on your team or for your project that you don’t like?

Is the tooling really backwards 10 years, or is it that you’re unfamiliar with it and just out of your comfort zone?

My first advice is "fuck the haters" here saying you shouldn't judge your coworkers. You absolutely should.

With that out of the way: Do you want to become a leader? Do you want to lead these people? Is it realistic to do so? If you are their better than this might be a good way to handle it.

If you are unable or unwilling to lead them, then you should probably transfer out asap. They'll pull you down, and you will notice it happen and you will resent them for it.

Your post wreaks of working at Amazon. I hate to tell you, but Amazon is the lowest hanging fruit of all FAANGs. They hire and fire at above average rates to try to find the best and then bait the rest to stay on with stock.

If you're at Amazon and you think things are going to get better, let me tell you, they aren't. Find a way out immediately unless you're okay basically moving forward with the same schizo management and dev policies.

Hope you find some work you enjoy!

I regret to inform you that you got suckered; anyone thinking of working for a FAANG should thing about it not like a new and exciting tech thing. History moved fast, you're effectively working in an old crusty company that occasionally does cool and interesting things.

> I've told this to lots of people who work in other division (that I can trust) and they've said the easiest thing is to just accept it as it is and coast. I've never done that in my career and don't think I could do that.

This is one of the reasons I usually disqualify people with long stints at FAANG on their resume.

If you plan to get back into startups, you may not want to stick around for too long. Another option is to jump to another FAANG where maybe you’ll be lucky to find better people/culture.

> I'm on a team that... is staffed with below-average IQ people.

I would definitely not want to work with you.

Has your experience been with startups entirely? I wonder if that is the thing here.

I think perhaps you maybe just weren't exposed to 'older' companies in the past and mostly worked in greenfield type situations?

>there's just too much to fix.

Welcome to any company that isn't a startup? Debt, tech, or otherwise (processes, etc) will exist if a company is old enough. That's just how it is, read up on Google enough and they've reworked their own systems numerous times when things didn't work anymore as they grew.

Smart companies, dumb companies, everyone accumulate debt as old systems don't do the thing right anymore. That's not wrong, that's just life. At those startups you worked at, everyone was laying the foundation for that and maybe just didn't know it ;)

Also I wouldn't assume that people are dumb because they don't want to fix it all... they maybe know, just also know it won't all get fixed / isn't worth it by pounding out weekends and nights all the time. I'd be wary of thinking 'these people are stupid / won't put in the work' when it might be just that they aren't going to kill themself fixing it all.

Lotta assumptions on my part here, just some food for thought.

I worked at Oracle for 8 years and there was zero effort into writing docs or automated env setup for developers. Like I literally couldn't code because there were no instructions for setting up a development environment.

From a manager point of view:

In your shoes I would make a decision to either fix/improve the situation or leave immediately.

If you decide for the former then make sure you have support from your management and own that decision. Be the one who turned the subpar division around. If it is as bad as you say you can hardly screw it up any worse. That's a privileged position to start from - difficult to fail.

I doubt your colleagues are really below average IQ - but perhaps their skills could be better. So teach them. Be the leader and mentor they likely never had. Have patience and build a team.

Fix the high impact, low effort problems first. Get some fast successes - they inspire and breed appetite for more. Don't exhaust your resources. Chip away one small problem at a time. It adds up faster than you think.

Create a vision for where you want to be in one year. Communicate that goal at every opportunity. Believe in it and other people will believe as well. It doesn't matter if you reach it within an arbitrary deadline - it matters that it exists in the first place.

Whatever you do, don't coast.

A job is a job. Quit if you don't like it, and stay if you think it's better than where you were before. If you can land a FAANG job, you can land a non-FAANG job too (with enough effort and time).

One possibility not mentioned is to connect with people working on other teams at the company and look for ways to build bridges. At Google I had a 20% project that got another team interested in working with me, so that’s where I transferred after a while.

Trying to turn a team around by working really hard seems like a good way to burn yourself out. Whether the team succeeds is likely beyond your control. Be helpful where you can, but let the manager worry about it.

It’s hard to tell much from a single comment, but referring to team members as “low IQ” seems like a warning sign that you might need to work on your people skills. Sure, you’re disappointed, but that’s not their fault so be careful not to use that as an excuse to take it out on them with the excuse of “raising standards” or some other justification like that. Been there, regretted being a jerk.

"staffed with below-average IQ people"

I don't think anyone is in the position to judge other IQ's especially co-workers. These people passed the same interview loop as you. Just puts them in the same "IQ" bracket as you. Maybe they also feel the same way as you and don't want to put their effort in trying to turn this team around and just want to coast and switch later on. You need to get off your high horse and try to understand the motivations of the team by talking to them individually and bringing stuff up in standups/meetings and suggest ways to improve. Work with your manager. Maybe you can be the one who can turn this team around without burning out yourself. In the end, its just a job and trick is to not take everything personally.

The job market in this field is pretty strong right now. Go somewhere else. There are lots of funded startups and smaller companies recruiting.

It is not weird to churn around early in your career to find the right fit. Try not to do it too much but one or two rapid hops on a CV is not strange.

Worry about your review. Everything else is secondary. Don’t try to turn the team around lol.

Did you do your research before picking this team? Did you interview the manager and the team members?

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of teams at some of these companies. They are not all bad. Do your research. And put yourself on one you would enjoy.

It seems to me that you went in with the wrong expectations. I don’t know the full details of your group and their tools and skills. I am not sure if you just want to work with the newest shiniest toys or if they really are bad. As I have progressed in my career I realized that latest isn’t always greatest and for me the most productive thing wins. If you think they really are lagging behind then the best thing you can do is take initiative. Start brown bag lunches and learning sessions. Suggest new methodology and try to get team buy in. I find that it is very gratifying to give back and improve things. Not to mention it could help you advance your career.

I have analogous experience working on projects/organizations that have experienced potential terminal neglect, though not at FAANGs. Probably I'd accept that your hours will be longer than acceptable, if that's a tradeoff you can handle. What you get in return is avoidance of the feeling that you spend all your time accomplishing nothing.

From there, it's building relationships, documenting what gets accomplished, and trying to meet people where they are so that they can maybe get something done (and not break other things.)

That's from a managing perspective, but if you are determined to not coast, that may be what you'll be doing.

You won't be able to change much, in my opinion. So you have to choose whether you stay and do it their way, or go.

There's a lot to be said about your situation, but I've found that oftentimes the only way to actually figure out if a job is for you is to try it out. I have had jobs in the past which looked really good from the outside, and I even got people recommending the employer and the team, and then when I started, it became painfully obvious that the place was nowhere near as good as expected. The opposite is actually less common in my experience - if if feels wrong and if people are telling you the company is not great, it probably isn't.

There's a reason why people like working at large and reputable companies. For anyone reading your CV in the years to come, a few years spent at such a company would look impressive. You do get the benefits you mentioned, like stability and salary, so that's a net positive in your current situation. Spending a bit of time there, maybe 1-2 years would definitely not set you back too far anyway, in terms of tech, experience, etc. so it might not be as bas as you imagine it.

Then, on the opposite side, if you really hate it now, maybe you won't start liking it down the line and it could be better if you throw in the towel sooner rather than later. I've had jobs where I was unpleasantly surprised at the start, then went through periods of liking my job and then hating it and then back to liking it, etc. All in all, when I look back, I tend to remember the better things, but I can also fully remember how awful it felt at times. If the primary reason for getting into the job was that you'd work on hard problems with top talent, and there's no way to get that in the near future, then why stay there at all? The current job market would probably allow you to find something very quickly.

It's really about how you feel about the job, I think. It won't probably hurt to start looking around for better opportunities, without rushing it. It does not sound like an emergency. Plus, this way you'd give it some chance at least. It's tough to be at a job which you don't like and it's all about figuring your priorities and sticking to them.

I don't think there's any shame in rage-quitting a FAANG company.

I was once in a high-profile, ambitious open-source (but not FLOSS) project which had much the same NIH syndrome as you're experiencing, but didn't have the staff/budget to maintain their tooling properly and I hated it to the point where I got myself fired, because I didn't have the integrity to quit on my own.

If you can change something, try. If you notice that it's futile, quit.

I can tell you from experience that trying to suffer through something while having no agency is really really really bad for your mental health.

"and is staffed with below-average IQ people."

What makes you suspect this? Even if the hiring process is full of BS, that BS usually requires a higher IQ to learn and deal with like LeetCode, right?

I work for a FAANG-like company right now, and used to work for Apple, and worked for startups too. Some thoughts.

• Engineers in large tech companies are neither better nor worse engineers than in startups on average. They just work on different things.

• Large tech companies are a lot more heterogeneous than it looks at first. I had a great experience with talented and respectful people at Apple, while a friend of mine was in another engineering division also at Apple, and… not so much. It’s so large, it can’t be the same throughout the company. It wouldn’t be surprising that your team is struggling to hire quality talent, but some others have an easier time, for all kinds of reasons.

• But each company does have some common cultural traits you’re likely to find throughout all its teams though. My current company takes a lot about the importance of work-life balance, while Apple told us at bootcamp on day 1 that we’d be working our asses off. In both cases, it turned out true.

So, one FAANG might be wrong for you, but another FAANG might be better. And one team in a FAANG might be wrong for you, but another team in the same FAANG might be better.

One reason I like larger companies is because once you’re in, they’re so large that it’s easy to switch to another role all the while having a lot of insider information about what you’re getting into, way more than if you were to switch companies. But yeah, a lot of the time they want to keep you on one team for a little bit first, so at least they’re getting some ROI on their efforts to find you.

I also work at Amazon and although some of my colleagues are fantastic, it definitely has the most variance in IQ I’ve experienced. Particularly in the non SWE roles. There are very few “hard problems” being solved. Most problems are figuring out the labyrinthine toolset, legacy code, and patching updates. And brutal soul crushing bureaucracy. The money is good but if you don’t need it you should leave ASAP given your situation.

You are on a bad team it seems. I wouldn’t blame your teammates and look at how you got there. They are probably better than you realize but motivation can play a huge role in interactions and performance.

You’ve said in a comment you have been at startups hiring and building teams. Those are growing teams. You are used to growing, building, and acting with accountability. Now you are on a team with turnover, that probably isn’t growing. Why? Is the team going to be shut down because of low value? Is it in a purely a maintenance function that will just be starved of resources? Is there bad leadership that can’t fix problems and has unrealistic expectations?

Likely whatever is wrong is out of your control. Don’t burn out trying to save something you might not even understand. Do a good job and try to learn “big org”. Look for a different team. Focus on extracurriculars. And find a new job at the year mark if it doesn’t get better (or earlier if you have too). Good luck.

Cracking up at the response to this thread. The comments here show how desperately tech workers need the validation of being in the Gifted Class and if you insinuate there's a culture of stupidity in FAANG they fall to pieces.

No comment on your predicament, best of luck and look for anybody smart and hustling around you that you can latch on to.

Things will be very team dependent at large companies.

I worked at some seemingly boring defense contractors on paper, but had a really cool team, and worked on a hard problem set... We all gelled well and everyone was smart.

But I also know if really dysfunctional teams at large companies that would otherwise sound exciting and interesting on paper...

It’s bad enough reading self-described A+ high IQ “players” bitching about stupid managers, customers, and users. It’s worse to see that hubris and arrogance turned on co-workers. So much to fix, with only you to do it. I’m guessing you won’t last long because no one will want to work with you.

Same boat here. I think I'm gonna stick it out for a year and go back to startups.

> "a FAANG"

What's that? There's only five of 'm, just give us a name. ;)

The grass is always greener on the other side. Having been through many companies you always think it’s just this one that uses bad tools, does not test the way I think they should, time frames are unrealistic, managers have no technical experience. Truth is it’s all of them. You got your foot in the door now start looking for that dream spot, even though not many will find it and if you do congratulations you are in the minority. With your attitude maybe they just want to see if you can pay your dues before they put you on something you might deem important.

FAANGs are large. Find a team that sounds interesting, and ask to move.

No use staying somewhere where you're unhappy. You can try to stick it out, if that suits your long term goals. But you only have one life to live. Consider what it's worth to you.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

By all means raise these concerns and suggest improvements, but ultimately if a FAANG wants to waste its money and be stupid, let them be and enjoy part of that money. In a small startup where you have significant financial upside in it succeeding my advice would be different, but here just lay back and enjoy the paychecks.

Given your description of the team it seems like you should be able to outperform them without any trouble.

Can you be more specific about the problems? This is some combination of:

* Different companies do things differently and you should have some humility about the way things are done here

* There's definitely a lot of cruft that can accumulate at larger companies, but the question is how much is it stopping you from being productive and getting the work done

* There's definitely shit teams at FAANGs, and by definition you're more likely to land at one coming in because of the turnover

See if you can transfer internally. If not, quit. I suspect that even if they're not excited about you transferring, if you're willing to quit over it, they'll make something happen.

Teams at large companies are all different (small companies, too), and the way this reads, I don't think you'll be effective with any amount of toughing it out, and it will end up being more stressful than it's worth.

> I feel like I've made a terrible decision and don't know what to do next.

My advice is straightforward. First, stay in the position until an adequate amount of time has passed so it won't raise eyebrows on your resume. Second, begin looking for other work doing what you want to do, using this job as a stepping stone.

You took a chance, it didn't work out as expected. That's life. Move on to the next thing!

You have a throw away at least mention which one it is!

Not unique to FAANG.

Is everyone coasting and there is a lot of turnover? This seems to be somewhat conflicting. Is there a lot of turnover because it is so boring people are quiting? I find this unlikely. I used to work in the government and most people are pretty content coasting, especially if there is a faang salary to go with it.

If people are getting pip'ed or fired it seems like it might be difficult to coast.

You don't have to "coast", you only have to learn to leave the stress and problems at work when the day ends. Work to fix things by day, try to find some enjoyment in it, be kind, and leave the troubles at the office when evening comes.

If you can do this and manage to turn the project around you will have achieved far more than knowing the latest toolsets.

It's much easier to move teams than move companies, so worth having a look around at other adjacent teams you could move to.

No advice but I've never worked for FAANG though considered it several times (yes, had offers too) but ultimately decided against it, because I suspected something like you described would await me. The money would be good but the price could be a part of my soul. Thanks for providing data to support my decision.

Put in some time and get out. It will help your resume, but not your soul.

I have been working with a FAANG recently, one that builds EVERYTHING in house. Almost comical. There are great engineers all over the place, but no cohesive strategy or overarching sense for product outside of a couple of niches. Not a great situation.

I would say just coast for a couple of years, cash the paycheck, try to find some time on the side to do your own building/learning. Then leave and use the "FAANG" line on your resume to command a better rate/salary at your next gig.

Also, "below-average IQ people" really? that seems unnecessary.

Quit and join a startup? Feel free to reach out, we're only hiring A+ players and solving hard problems.

I recall working for a company who programmed POS in Basic... The place was 20 years late (in any domain) and dysfunctionnal. YET, it is still in business today and making money on a regular basis.

As for me I quit, because I could not focus on my role and instead focused on the environment.

Welcome to big tech corp paranoia. Enjoy your stay!

But seriously don't hold on to something that makes no sense to you whatsoever. I'm pretty sure management won't turn the boat for you especially at the scale of your complaints so think about your exit strategy.

The lesson here is that you shouldn't just join a FAANG company, you should aim for particular teams inside it. Any big company has a lot of operational needs, and not all of them are hard and exciting, on the contrary: most of those just aren't.

I've worked at these companies for several years, gotten promoted, shuffled around internally, etc...it can be frustrating and demoralizing for sure. But it can be rewarding too, and I saw plenty of people coast without stressing too much.

Here are my survival tips. Tl;Dr, calm down and try to be positive at work.

* Things are never as serious as they seem, and deadlines are rarely as solid as they seem. These companies have inertia and capital, and they understand that estimates are not promises.

* Check in with your teammates regularly, and avoid giant complicated code reviews. Be ready to change direction quickly, and don't worry too much about throwing away a few days of work if a better solution presents itself.

* Try to get a feel for how the in-house tools work. Even a basic understanding of how large companies handles things like deployments might be valuable in the future.

* Ignore the politics. Try to help your peers, and be nice to them even when they're annoying. They may or may not be "low-IQ", but as long as your teammates feel like you help them out, you should get good annual reviews without needing to work more than 40hrs/wk.

* If you want to transfer internally, be up-front about it with your manager. In-house transfer applications aren't always private.

It’s just a 2 year stint my guy

You’re not married or anything close to that and you don’t have an hour commute anymore either

Maybe don’t work nights and weekends. The rest of your team lowers the bonus performance expectations, so just coast and collect yours

Seems like a pretty good problem to have. Keep in mind all jobs are temporary arrangements. You're free to leave any time you like. I'd say just collect your checks and look for a job with better coworkers.

How low can their IQ be if they can solve Leetcode mediums in 30 minutes?

I see you joined Amazon. Do what every other smart person does, and quit.

You're getting a lot of heat from HN about the IQ comment here, instead of being give actual helpful advice or given a charitable reading of the intent behind your statement. (Is it just me, or has HN's quality dropped somewhat significantly over the last ~1.5 years?)

My experience is similar to yours, however. I have managed, led, and been a part of teams at small startups for the last 10 years of my career. I recently joined a name brand, large tech company (not FAANG, but maybe a half step down from there. They certainly think of themselves as a FAANG-type company).

I've had the same experience as you.

There's much more money. Our compensations are higher. The technology choices are more cutting edge and expensive.

But the toolset my team was using to actually develop, is worse than what I've used for the last decade.

The people I interviewed with ranged from extremely intelligent and skilled, to the sort of rude know-it-all engineering type you hear about related to faang interviews. The interview process was so difficult that I was on track to fail it, until an upper manager reached out and personally interviewed me to see what was going wrong, and corrected the process.

But my team, while great people I enjoy working with, are a very, very considerable step down in terms of skill, ability, and knowledge from the last team I managed. And those guys were making easily 50k+ / year less than my current team members.

I also thought I was joining to solve A+ hard problems, and I'm also having a bit of a hard time with it.

I started at the beginning of 2021, I'm taking a couple of approaches, mentally to this. Firstly, I'm not leaving until my stock options finish vesting. So that means I'm in this for the long haul.

Second, the fact that I'm so much more knowledgable than the rest of my team, I hope, should set me up for promotions down the line. I think part of what's going on here, is that this company is so_much_larger than the startups I've worked for in the past, means that ICs genuinely don't get to see most of the truly difficult problems, because true difficulty gets spread out over so many more people, and solved by people higher up the totem pole than a lowly IC. FWIW, this desire has made me really dislike the current Covid WFH arrangement. As great as WFH is, getting promoted is so much harder when you lack consistent facetime with the people around you.

Thirdly, I really, really, really blame the modern FAANG inspired Leetcode interview process. My teammates clearly have the ability to solve leetcode style questions. And in the blue moon opportunity that such a question comes up in code, it is usually solved pretty quickly. But actually important coding skills? I will be keeping this in mind as much as possible when I vet out companies when doing future interviews, and I very much hope this industry fad changes over time.

Fourth: the fact that I can develop so much quicker and cleaner than my coworkers, means that I can take advantage of the fact that this company has many more different types of technology than I would be exposed to at a start up. I will be spending that extra time bumping up my own skillset, so as to be a more desirable candidate once my options vest.

However, all of the above is specific to one assumption: I ultimately like this company, and enjoy the job. I am not working nights and weekends at a company I hate. So if that's the position you find yourself in, I would suggest leaving. The mere fact that something is a FAANG doesn't automatically mean its a good job. Weigh your income vs your options vs your happiness, and make a decision. The "FAANG" title holds very little weight in that decision, except as a good-looking line-item on your resume.

Re: your IQ comment, I recommend reading “Mindset” by Carol Dweck.

>just accept it as it is and coast

This is why you go to faang. Take the money.

it's Amazon isn't it? lol

Change teams or leave. Lots of people change right away.

i would like to propose indexed syntax for FAANG. example:

"I work for FAANG[2]" or "I work for FAANG[0]".

would be so much more fun naming your employer !

> staffed with below-average IQ people

Just as an FYI, this comment comes off as incredibly arrogant to anyone who’s going to read it.

Looks like those people joined FAANG to work with people like you. So be the person you wanted to work with yourself.

Consider trying less hard. Do mediocre work. They’re all still employed for doing mediocre work. It may be very difficult to produce poor quality work - you’ll have to overcome your “I’m brilliant” ego to do so — but you can trust that your peers, by your description anyways, are not encumbered by such ego.

Should be nice and easy for you to stand out amongst your peers then.

sorry but if you're calling your colleagues "below-average IQ people" you're just an asshole

Just quit and don’t torture yourself

Expectations are the thief of joy.

So what is your IQ exactly?

"I've told this to lots of people who work in other division (that I can trust) and they've said the easiest thing is to just accept it as it is and coast"

The Big Head character from Silicon Valley is again proved to be (like all the characters) spot-on accurate. Mike Judge is sorely underappreciated.

My $0.02 advice: you seem smart, hard-working, and self-motivated. Become a consultant and be your own boss. Use the FAANG creds to demand a high rate. It's a market, and you can leverage your abilities as services you can offer. Work it to your advantage.

I work at a fortune 500 company right now and it's regular people who do mundane office jobs. Some just happen to be programmers.

I love the boring lame talk because it gets me out of work.