We have multiple people giving their anecdotes saying big tech positions emphasize self-promotion, and one anecdote (yours) saying they don't.
So, sincere question: for those of us who haven't worked at a FAANG, why should we believe that your experience is the norm while the other people's is the "corner"?
I am a staff engineer at meta. I can certainly relate to Carmack's pain in getting things done on a large scale, there are I think about 9 levels between me and Zuck (so a lot of ladder climbing to reach my goal of CEO)!! But I don't feel like I have to be good at politics. You would probably be surprised at the level of snark which is openly published!
I don't see my colleagues self-promote very much at all. I am in a very practical and focused team though, there is certainly a variety of team cultures. I will say that the performance review process is a pain, I feel like it is a lot of work documenting everything I have worked on...
Literally every single company I've worked at has had loads of bullshit to deal with. Some BS was easier to handle than others! Overall I feel like things are interesting and there are good opportunities to grow in a big tech company, so I am happy for now. I've learned more in one year at meta than multiple years at other places.
The performance review process at Meta and Google is so exhausting… It eats up a good 50% of everyone in the EM structure, without (in my and my colleagues’ experience anyway) any tangible benefit.
I also work at a faang in a senior engineering role.
I agree with what the other commenter is saying. I’ve been in several teams with several managers and xfn partners and you have a lot of different cultures. From the toxic wasteland to the ultra focused get shit done right fast environment engineers love.
To your point about why more people complain than not, it’s the human condition. Haters hate is stronger than non haters happiness and are more than willing to share their salt
Because there is a huge selection bias that influences the sample of people that comment on these types of posts. I will back up the claim that, in my experience, a lot of this thread is hyperbole. There is some truth to it, sure, but don't make the mistake of thinking these anecdotal accounts actually represent the typical experience.
There is an obvious selection bias in who posts. Anyway I also never seeked promotion (even tried to avoid it) but have been promoted four times now. I never chase glory and only focus on quality engineering and I’ve always gotten credit.
People who don’t get promoted are likely to complain about it — often that the system was out to get them. I mean how often do you hear somebody go, “Yeah I was passed over for a promotion and you know what, I didn’t deserve it.” People who do get promoted at a FAANG (either by self-promotion or not) probably don’t want to brag about it because of the general sentiment here at HN.
That’s true. There’s also the flip side that those who choose the systems are likely the ones who succeeded in those systems.
I’m talking about directors, senior managers of engineering who worked their way up the corporate ladder. The system worked for them, so they think it’s a good system.
Listen, you're talking about companies with hundreds of thousands of employees scattered all across the globe. Do you really think there's one homogeneous culture across everything? Single orgs can have the population of small towns. "culture" is a local phenomenon.
There are promotion oriented people. There are not promotion oriented people. There are mutants who work 12 hours every day and call into meeting while on vacation because they want to climb the ladder. There are teams which are hyper focused on visibility and self-promotion, and there are teams which just quietly churn out good tech. There are hundreds of thousands of people. You're going to get different experiences. I'm not sure why that's such a crazy idea to you.
These companies are cities, not villages. You'll find every type of experience at them. You'll find some incredibly exciting work, some boring work, great managers, crap managers, and everything in between all of that.
Just look in front of you. The monitor you are using right now. That's incredible technology. You think that would be possible if people did not care about engineering, having a number of peers around them across multiple levels of the organization that cared to a similar level?
EDIT: What I mean is, you need multiple passionate people across many levels to achieve that. If reward culture wasn't somewhat healthy, I don't believe this could work.
That has absolutely no bearing on the comment you replied to or my own. OP didn't say anything about engineering, OP said you had to play games to get promoted. That's not mutually exclusive with having good engineers.
I am not sure it is realistic to expect that all the good engineers never get promoted and that there would still be something good coming out over time.
I'm not sure where I said that good engineers don't get promoted. Of course they do. They either worked for a good management team, aggressively self-promoted, or were in a visible project.
What I am saying is that there are a lot of good engineers don't get promoted, despite doing important work on vital systems, because they don't aggressively self-promote and optimize their careers around the promotion path.
There are also companies that are good at recognizing good yet normally-under-appreciated work, and there are companies that are bad at it. FAANG is bad at it, in my experience, and the experience of people I've worked with. It's an anecdote and not data.
And in my experience, FAANG are not bad at it, so my point is: These generalizations don't work.
I even stated that I don't doubt this may have been true for you. But if every large company were really so bad in general as is portrayed here, the people who make good stuff, and who need to work with each other a great deal to achieve that, would leave.
I feel like there are a lot more promotions to go around in bigger companies though! I've worked in smaller orgs and promotions are harder to come by, if there is even a career ladder at all that is.
You're still putting words into people's mouths. No one said none of the good engineers get promoted, they said that being a good engineer is not sufficient to be promoted. A good engineer who is also good at playing promotion games would presumably do very well.
PragmaticPulp specifically said the engineers his team hired were actually rather good, just had bad habits:
> The strange thing was that many of them were actually good programmers when it came down to it.
I said: "I never played any game to be promoted, I simply never consciously sought the goal of promotion, and I was promoted anyway just because of the real, substantial job I did."
And I did see other peers who did not play any games that I could see be promoted for merit.
So maybe generalizations over large companies just don't work well.
Now we're back to where I started: I don't disbelieve your experience, but given that you're the only one here who shares that experience I asked you to tell me why I should believe that your experience is more representative than the half dozen other people who have shared theirs? To me it seems more likely that you had a particularly good corner of the organization.
FWIW, my experience is not substantially different from the other poster.
I think that this largely depends on how good or bad one's immediate management is. Good managers hold the line to insulate their teams away from this kind of corporate culture to the extent possible. And the proportion of such managers varies from company to company, and even between different units in the same company.
We're moving in circles, but again, I don't believe a company can bring out good products for very long if my experience is the exception. And as so often the case, the "half dozen" other people might be venting for their experience.
If there is no somewhat healthy reward culture, the multiple passionate people in the many different levels needed would leave.
> I am not sure it is realistic to expect that all the good engineers never get promoted and that there would still be something good coming out over time.
I have heard lots of stories about how the only real way to get promotion/real raise was to change company you work for. Because getting raise is harder compared to hiring someone of the street with hefty premium on top.
I have heard lots of stories about how the
only real way to get promotion/real raise
was to change company you work for.
That's definitely the best way. Here's my take. I am ignoring promotions/raises given to junior/intern type employees who become regular engineers.
80% of engineering promotions/raises come from switching companies
10% of engineering promotions/raises come from doing greenfield work. If you can find a way to do greenfield work you will look great (because you can move fast) and multiple other people will be dependent on the mess you left behind and they will look bad because they are moving at a fraction of your speed.
10% of engineering promotions/raises come from engineers who show obvious managerial talent and are interested in a managerial role
0% of engineering promotions/raises come from maintaining somebody else's system
So, sincere question: for those of us who haven't worked at a FAANG, why should we believe that your experience is the norm while the other people's is the "corner"?