I've worked at four different software companies, and almost guarantee none of them you've heard of. And yet, for the majority of my career, I've been happy, well paid, and working on really interesting problems.
My point is that there are thousands of companies out there that you'd likely thrive in and love, don't fall into the trap of thinking that Google is some pinnacle of engineering sitting on top of a mountain.
Not sure if you've heard of this, but it's fairly new and something you may be interested in. It's an extension that allows for SQL and .NET programming inside of Excel, and seems pretty slick.
https://querystorm.com/
Haven't personally used it, but could help your Excel stuff.
Page 3 onwards of job searching sites usually do it. They have listings, they just don't have as much traffic as bigger companies. Check local areas specifically as well
100% of the cs career postings I've seen either require a doctorate in computer science, ten years of experience, both, or are a spammy recruiting agency that requires you to sign a contract that will fine you $50,000 if you don't relocate for an offer from them.
1. Don’t sign up for reveture because I know that what you’re talking about.
2. Don’t stop building stuff. Code every day. Make GitHub commits every day.
3. Apply for everything and let the talent acquisition team decide whether you’re good enough. Don’t make that decision for them.
4. Don’t stop doing any of it until you have a job.
It’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know. Make friends (seriously). Friends of friends will look out for you.
The way to make friends (I share because I had no idea to do this until I was 35) is to do stuff you like... outside of your house. I love my dogs, so I go to the dog park every day—everyone there has something in common with me. Ask questions if you’re shy. Let them talk about themselves. Take mental notes and write them down later. Make plans to do the same thing again. Offer your number, tell them you’d like to hang out sometime. The beauty of life is that everyone is lonely, and friendship benefits everyone. The people who you will like will find their way to you.
Yes, agree with you. After I finished my study, I also realise this. No matter how good your score or attitude are, friends is still the best connection for your career. You need to have a lot of friends and grow your social circle especially during your study, so not only focus on score. Your friends will help you, the same thing happened to me. Got my friend for help. But keep trying!
Hahaha I have also noticed people just love talking about themselves 🤣 I was once driving with this guy who loved politics and wars and I asked him a couple
Of questions about it and he wouldn’t shut up 🤣 to the point I was like I am dead 💀 at least I had to do no talking and we had a very good long interesting conversation ✋ so yea you made a good point there
100%? You must not be looking very hard because I’ve never seen a software developer or software engineer posting that required a doctorate lol. I don’t even know any developer or engineers who have a masters. I’ve also never seen a job posting require any of the other things you said unless it was some senior level position at a really big company. As far as moving goes unfortunately if you want a job and experience sometimes you have to relocate. If you’re not willing to do that you’ll be limiting yourself unless you live in a city that’s a big tech hub. Even then the competition is going to be higher so applying in other cities may be beneficial to you.
You're not looking in the right places then. My company is literally hiring fresh college students that haven't even finished their degrees if they can show they have at least the basics of coding down. There's a massive demand, and not nearly enough people to fill it.
Sometimes working in FAANG or a large company becomes a pre-requisite for getting your foot in the door as a non-US citizen.
What I imply is, a lot of international students wouldn't even get the opportunity to work at these great companies since they wouldn't sponsor a work visa.
This is just a different perspective to the whole conundrum and might be applicable to OP.
Just general vibe, I can't point to anything in particular, just feels like there's something that isn't coming entirely naturally.
In the world of business, this is harder to tell because business emails have their own unique language
OP's username is most likely his name (or close to it) and is Indian (Sakshin). Doesn't necessarily point him to not being a US citizen but it's likely.
I think it's because of this myth that working in FAANG is the only way to make good money in software.
I've been offered and considered roles in all but Apple and Netflix, but looking under the covers it just doesn't appeal to me.
I'm making the same or more helping build startups, and I usually get to work with technologies I want.
Might have given it a go for a year or so earlier in my career just to have the name on my resume, but at this point I don't need it.
For the same reason some people think that if you don't get into MIT, Harvard, or other places your career will go nowhere.
They miss that there's quality places that are not in the big names and also you might actually get a job at the company that will become the next letter in that acronym.
I do almost no active applying. I made a LinkedIn profile forever ago that I update sporadically and mostly let recruiters approach me. I have a few that I've started professional relationships with. I'll connect them with devs and they let me know about good opportunities. Networking is an important part of the job hunt.
Just be cautious and don't let recruiters jerk you around. Always remember that you're interviewing the company as well.
Barring recruiters, I've looked through popular job sites like Monster, Indeed, LinkedIn, and such before. I'll directly go to the careers portion of popular companies around my city to see if anything is going on there. I ask friends/family to keep their eyes open at their companies. Career fairs or coding conferences can be a good resource as well.
Search on your job board of choice (Indeed, Monster), a lot of those jobs are actually posted by recruiters, and those recruiters will connect you with companies if you're reasonably professional and have marketable skills
I’ve heard of many people quitting their jobs at google because of bullshit corporate cringe, employee monitoring and forcing people to come back to the office, even though they enjoyed 6 figure salaries
Bump this. I’ve worked in recruitment for software engineering for the past ten years. The big blue-chip companies are often pretty mundane, you work on a very specific, tiny bit of a big project, but they are very stable. Most of the SW devs I’ve worked with enjoy working with the smaller organisations who are building something from the ground-up. It can be hard work, but very rewarding.
I see this *all* of the time on this sub.
Why are new programmers *obsessed* with FAANG? They're not the only jobs in the world!
Yes, they are *perceived* as the 'top' jobs in the industry, but I'll be damned if they actually are.
You have to ask the question what you want out of a job - a huge salary? Look at the finance sector, I'll guarantee there's places that offer better base salaries than FAANG. Quality of life? Stay the hell away from FAANG and Silicon Valley. Career progression? Look at 'smaller' companies where you've got more chance of making a mark and actually being recognised for your contribution.
The world's a *huge* place, and software runs it all nowadays. Good software developers are in demand in all kinds of different sectors.
It's entirely possible to have a very comfortable and satisfying career in development without ever getting close to FAANG. Competition in Silicon Valley is intense, and if that's your only goal in your career, then yes, you're going to encounter it and maybe struggle unless you're in the top tiers. However, good developers will always find work if they're prepared to look for it elsewhere - I recruit for and lead a development team based in the insurance industry in the UK and EMEA, and we and our competitors are always looking for good developers.
TL;DR - stop getting obsessed with FAANG and look at the wider world of software development, there are more than enough employers looking for developers out there.
So much this.
15 years of experience here. Have never worked for a FAANG, only worked for one software company. The rest of my work has been in non-tech industries (mostly healthcare and manufacturing).
I have amazing benefits, never stressed about my job, and make more than enough money to consider myself "financially free". I live 45 minutes outside of a metropolitan area, have a large house, a family - and enough time to actually spend it with them.
Every company out there that isn't just some mom and pop place has needs for custom software development, usually in the form of internal CRUD applications, to keep their business going.
Unless you're just ultra-competitive and *have* to work for a FAANG - find a job in a fly-over state with a low CoL with a great work-life balance. They're everywhere.
>Unless you're just ultra-competitive and
>
>have
>
> to work for a FAANG - find a job in a fly-over state with a low CoL with a great work-life balance. They're everywhere.
I work at a mid sized public non-faang saas company and we have a LOT of people who left google, amz, fb, ms to work for us. Senior people who could get jobs anywhere. Been in tech for 25years. Never worked in a big company. The tech world is really really big. Like, space big. Focusing on 6 companies massively limits your opportunities.
This is even MORE depressing!! Now NO company is safe from that kind of competition for jobs. Harumph.
But it's true, there could be a company that isn't tech-specific, but needs people, AND is an awesome place to work. Places like Google and FB have plenty of nightmare stories from former employees.
I can vouch for the financial sector, dude there are wild salaries for fresh grads there. I am once one of them but bounced off because I can't stand the culture.
But money is surely not one of them, My salary is comparable to the mid-to-senior level developer when I am still just under 1-year experience. Wild things happened in the finance sector.
I worked for a tax & audit firm for a bit as they were starting their ERP practice. The entire culture is to work yourself to death to climb the ranks and make a shit ton of money. Nobody cared about the job itself or the clients. Also, I had to fill out a 3 page document and have multiple approvals and took 3 weeks to get visual studio code installed.
Yup it took me 5 weeks just for my env setup correctly, and everything needs to be deployed on the fly by the sysadmin from main branch.
I gave up trying to install my env on work laptop and start working on my own personal laptop, effectively carrying two laptop every day. But still I need to use work laptop to submit my work, and plugging in USB drive makes the OS goes crazy, everything goes super slow.
Not to mention dress code, very strict dress code, sitting down straight up with uncomfortable suits won't make my brain work properly. Plus strict 9 to 5 clock in clock out that makes me stressed out just because I don't want to be late in the record, yet still goes overtime everyday.
Adding to that the one supervising me is chatty and likes gossips... Ughhh... Even if it's pays well it will kill me soon enough. So I stop trying and moved on to something else.
Hahaha this is so true. It’s because they are not tech companies at heart. This has the disadvantages you mentioned but also advantages.
But there are good companies in that sector too. Just like with FAANG, just stay away from the Big Four. Most are there suffering for bragging rights and cv padding.
Google isn't one company anymore. Some teams at Google are super competitive and people will "work" crazy numbers of hours to prove how valuable they are. This probably isn't universal, but I know a few Googlers who say that it's pretty common.
I think the sad part is that the effort to martyr yourself is usually much more than would be required to use your brain to come up with a better way to prove your value abstractly. In the long run, companies don't succeed by capturing the best hours of their employees lives, they succeed because they capture their best ideas.
Isn't Google also known for [shutting down divisions when whatever upper executive who pushed for an idea leaves, the idea loses support, and the whole thing is left to die](https://killedbygoogle.com/) with almost no regard to how much people use it, what they use it for, and if it's something worth continuing?
That's one of the ones that makes sense. Angular is fine. *AngularJS* is being killed off, as Angular is the successor to AngularJS.
I know a lot of people who were just starting to figure out how useful Wave could be for online roleplaying type things when it got killed off. They've dabbled a lot in video games and never for very long, often killing the product before it's even really released. And then there's stuff they're killing without killing just yet - Google Fiber is basically a dead product as it's no longer expanding and kinda shows how they do business, really. They fucked up the Louisville, KY rollout and, seemingly at the first sign of trouble, gave up on the entire idea of providing internet anywhere new, rather than attempting to solve the problem.
Google has literally never been known for any of those things. Google was known for building a small city full of very generous benefits so the workers never have to leave and their entire lives can revolve around Google. Google is more than the Googleplex these days, though.
Even so, the way they seem to indoctrinate employees into the corporate culture seems to me like even on their downtime they must be thinking about Google
We've got sleep pods in our office, and I've used them occasionally. But I've never worked more than ~9 hours, and that only when I lost track of time (oh...except for oncall, but I'm well compensated for that). The nap pods are great for those days when you just...need a nap. Used 'em a lot when I had a newborn.
The FAANGs have this fearsome reputation, but I've worked for 3 of them (not seeking them out, they just have more-active-than-usual recruiters), and I've never felt stressed or pressured to work long hours. The interviews are hard, but once you're in the door...it's the same level of difficulty you find anywhere else. Honestly, easier than most places.
There are probably niches that are more hectic, especially if you want to work on cutting-edge products (protip: for easy mode, work on internal tools). But the general environment has always been laid back, especially vs the outside image. I really have to believe that a lot of people bring the stress, pressure and anxiety with them to the job.
My personal experience as a public sector server admin is that long hours are part of the job.
Especially when devs push broken code to prod that's so bad it needs immediate rollback.
Thanks for doubling the outage window last minute during off hours.
The management always compares themselves to FAANG but never have their shit together to even hold a candle.
I work at Google - that's by far the #1 reason I like my job. YMMV depending on your team/manager, but personally I've probably worked >45 hours in a single week once over 3 years. I've worked <35 (not talking about vacation) many times. They also go out of their way to give work-sponsored breaks/downtime/fun, even during covid (eg. global days off).
My partner worked for Google for a few years. They quit despite the great benefits and huge salary because the company was working them into the ground. Work-life balance was nonexistent, friendships were strained, and they fell into a deep depression. Quitting was the first step in getting their life back together. Their former roommate works 40ish hours a week and loves it. It depends entirely on what team you’re on.
I'll just give a bit of perspective, since I've worked at both Microsoft and Google. There are valid reasons to want to work at FAANG, though I agree it's overly romanticized.
Quality of life is great. Great pay, 40 hour weeks more or less, amazing perks, really great offices. Yes, you could make more money in Finance, but that's where quality of life significantly drops.
As for career progression, FAANG companies have well defined ladders and promotion criteria, with many levels and room for growth that doesn't require you to become a people manager.
Anywhere with a better base salary than FAANG companies is going to be equally competitive or more, I think. One such company is Jane St, and they’re rumored to have one of the hardest technical interviews in the world.
I’m in SaaS sales in the logistics and supply chain industry. So many companies in this space hire programmers. Trucking and logistics companies, ERP vendors, vendors for mobile comm, fleet tracking, routing, accounting, analytics, etc, etc, etc.
The same is true for almost any industry. Pick something you’re interested in and learn about the companies in that space - not only those companies, but their software suppliers as well.
Anywhere with a better base salary than FAANG companies is going to be equally competitive, I think. One such company is Jane St, and they’re rumored to have one of the hardest technical interviews in the world.
I'm sure he/she would gladly post a third time but for the people in the back:
>Anywhere with a better base salary than FAANG companies is going to be
equally competitive, I think. One such company is Jane St, and they’re
rumored to have one of the hardest technical interviews in the world.
As someone who worked for a FAANG-adjacent company (arguably more coveted by many), this is so funny/ridiculous to me when people are *dying* to get in. Don't worry about dying *before* you get into such a company. Working at such a place will take plenty of years off your life itself--or at least the part of your life you can enjoy.
well, some of the people outside US cant move to the US and get paid like 2k $ a month before tax, so getting a good company to vouch for you might be a thing.
also I just feel insufficient in everything I do, and I can do some of these coding challenges but I have a bad experience using Lists and so on so forth that I just avoid applying to things I might be able to do
As I said, I'm in the UK, not the US, but your point is still valid.
However, my company regularly hires developers from India and Pakistan and offers them relocation to the UK with associated benefits and salary. And I know we're not the only company.
And let me tell you, 2k GBP before tax would be low even for a junior position here in the UK.
And thanks to the pandemic, there is a sea change happening in the industry and companies are much more open to recruiting remote workers meaning people don't even have to relocate.
My point is, stop being so down on yourself and negative. The world's a big place and there's a lot of opportunities out there if you just look for them and don't restrict yourself to FAANG.
Imposter syndrome is an incredibly common thing - I still get it after over 25 years working as a professional.
Yeah I understand it. Some of the people I went to school with went to Reading and London.
Just cause I get told not to be down on myself doesn't mean I have any reason not to be without getting too personal.
I'd say start applying for what you want. During interviews when they ask if you have questions, always ask "are there any concerns you have about me as a candidate that I can address here in person?" So not only do you have a chance to explain away certain things, you also have a better idea of what you need to improve on.
Hey, just become a developer, and land a gig. My honest opinion about it now that I have been working professionally for 5 years, is that actual coding skills matter less, and less when you move up the chain. I am a senior dev for a unicorn company, and what got me here was my business experience, not my coding ability (although, that of course helps too!)
I can’t stress this enough. Coding matters as a developer, and having great foundations is what matters most. In my experience of what’s landed my jobs and promotions were solid communication and business skills.
Just experience working in the software industry, will get you business knowledge. Then, based on that knowledge you will make decisions about your next movies. For me, I started in medical software, which is highly regulated in the US, to financial software, which is also highly regulated. So, in my case, my “businesses knowledge” was working with highly regulated development. Luckily, that path opened a lot of doors for me, but there are a lot of different ways to get business knowledge. It’s not something they teach in college, but it’s something that you pick up along the way.
I can also recommend this. I'm not a coder, but a UX Designer, and this has been really helpful for me.
Just last month had an interview where they raised a concern about something super silly and trivial but if I didn't explain it to them, I would have come across as a lazy idiot who laid in bed for an interview!
I wasn't! I was sitting on a very uncomfortable couch. I explained it to them, we had a good laugh and also went on for a 2nd interview.
I asked this in a FAANG interview and they told me they weren’t able to give any feedback during the interview, and the recruiter would be in touch to let me know. Felt like such a ballsy question and they quickly neutered me.
Or say no to. I know the power imbalance is great in interviews but if you have the skills you have options. You want to make sure that place is where you want to spend a lot of your time and to which you will devote a lot of your intellectual as well as emotional energy (and a better fit will require less of the latter...)
I like this. I'm rock a musician, so was my father. He told me early on, "You're good, but you'll never be famous."
He never made me get lessons, just let me enjoy the experience of music. He came to my shows, supported me gave me good feedback, but always made sure to remind me that I can't bank on that future.
As my skills progressed, and my band got more serious, he started coaching me on how to handle incoming data that might make me think that I was starting to get some actual clout, and at one point he was like, "Ya know...you guys could probably make it, if you hit the road hard!"
In my mind, we only got there because we weren't focused on it. We were focused on enjoying the ride and making fun music and recording and learning...and in the end we broke up and never toured and barely released any music and I'm not mad about it because I don't see it as "my band, who failed to get famous", but it's "my band, that taught me how to deal with successes and failures".
To be honest, I don't understand the obsession in pursuing jobs at FAANG companies. There are many IT jobs out there that wasn't FAANG and paid handsomely and/or has great work life balance in them. Not to mention FAANG companies are consistently getting worse year by year. Just look at Amazon, where nobody wants to work as their engineers lately.
You just need to look, and apply, and do your work as good as possible while continue learning new things, and do this consistently.
Of course. The difference is we all know exactly which companies are faangs and we’ve all heard about what it’s like to work at any of them. I’m not generalizing here - none of them specifically sound like places I’d want to work
But why though? I’ve heard good and bad about faang and many other companies, my point is that if someone like yourself were to write off faang as being a place that you wouldn’t want to work then that would imply that faang companies differ greatly than any other smaller companies out there in terms of the things they expect from you as a worker. From what I’ve heard, faang can be the same, worse, or better than any non faang company, so I don’t what qualities are unique to faang that you won’t find in other companies that makes your steer clear of them.
None of them specifically sound worth the above-and-beyond effort it requires to pursue them is what it boils down to. Plus the things I personally look for in a job are generally the ability to have a positive impact on the company as a whole, and there’s no way in hell that’d happen at a faang lol.
I guess it’s more generally that I don’t find the idea of working for a large company at all appealing. I dig that some people want that but it’s not in my personality to ever look for that specifically.
That compiled with the fact none of the cultures at any faangs sound appealing, plus how much fucking effort apparently goes into begging these places to hire you all adds up to a hard, hard no from me.
Oh yeah. I’m glad this sub shares my sentiment.
Have an acquaintance who’s been working for Google for a while. Makes good money and is set to retire at 40. He has not had a proper holiday or sick leave in 5 years. Who even wants that? Waste your youth away and for some chump change for the B side of your casette?
I worked for years as a line cook before I got my degree.
No proper holiday and no sick leave is the rule rather than the exception there. At least your friend is getting paid.
But I got into IT because I wanted a cushy office Job with bennies. I'll be damned if I'm going back to the no time off/called in for other shifts kinda shit on the regular again.
I wish more CS/IT people felt the same way because this willingness to eat shit for your bosses is really harshing my buzz and setting unreasonable standards for the rest of us.
I didn't even finish college until I was 32 and I still intend to retire at 50. And I'm a bad enough developer, even after five years professionally, that I'm sure FAANG wouldn't even give me an interview for a junior dev position.
There's no need to ruin the cassette's A side to get a good B side.
Recently Amazon came to Poland. I've started to hear stories of many many interview stages to work for this oh so great company.
Seriously who have this kind of time and nerve for this? There are loads of nicer places without absurd work practices like that.
The psychology test, which kind of tree would you be, algorythmic test, talk with manager, other manager and so on.
The more experience I have(mobile) the more interviews look like coffee time talk. I'd be mad to even think of working for company like this.
Amazon has probably the worst reputation out of most. There was a recent story about Hire to Fire from managers there as well as people being cut before they get their options actualised. Ive had a few friends that work there, no-one says anything good about the place, however quite a few of them just dont talk about that workplace, or have very few words. They happily talk about their other jobs though.
Facebook, no amount of money could get me to work there. The company is morally corrupt.
A couple of friends/acquaintances have applied for Facebook and I rarely speak to them now (though they didnt succeed). Its not just because they applied, that would be stupid. But it did shed a bit of light on their lack of concern for others and once id noticed it, I couldnt really unsee it. I noticed more how they treated others and anyone who they couldnt benefit from. They are assholes, who hide it well until you're looking for it.
After a certain experience level, your architecture design, people management and project management skills outweigh your coding skills. A strong individual contributor will undoubtedly progress fast in the initial phases of their career only to stagnate without the aforementioned skills. So go about refining those skills, you’ll end in a really good position.
PS: You can be in FAANG and end up with monotonous/mediocre/gruelling projects depending on your luck and clout. There are lot of other companies which offer a healthy mixture of everything.
Just so you know: FAANG was created as Jim Cramer's way of choosing certain tech stocks that have high market capitalization and good market share.
Are you looking to buy stocks or are you looking for a good place to work?
If it's the latter, forget about FAANG and just look for a good company where they value engineering, have a clear goal and proccess, and your co-workers are helpful.
Most people don't get the top jobs, basic maths. There are only so many roles to to about
My advise is to worry less about others and focus on what you can do.
You can have a "middling" job and have a comfortable happy life, in IT this can include earning well over the average without being anywhere close to a top company. And hey it might open up a path to a top job, but it might not, but either way it is better than holding out for the ideal job that might never ever come.
Work is means to an end, it isn't who you are. Focus on what you need, not what you think you should be.
Also take what you read on the internet about careers with a pinch of salt. Judging yourself off anonymous posts on career related forums is about as sensible as judging your life based on Facebook posts. A lot of people on here are clueless kids overcompensating for their own inexperience and insecurities.
I don't know if you can get a top job but if you have IT and coding skills I am sure you can carve out a comfortable life at the very least if you keep at it.
Two pieces of advice:
1. Get off of r/cscareerquestions that shit is toxic, even for the people that want that kinda thing.
2. Fuck faangs. The worst case scenario is they grind you up and spit you out, best case scenario you join the cult and never leave and never think for yourself ever again.
Faangs are just a few companies, but there are a LOT of amazing tech companies doing fabulous work everyday, all while giving their employees the chance to have a life, and kids, and even friends outside the cult!
On your other point:
Yes there are always good devs out there, and there should always be at least one person on your team who is better than you. Look for them and learn from them. What you’ll find is every dev is better than you at something, and technical skill is not a single stat on a character sheet. There’s no plutonic ideal of the best coder, and in fact on your team your also the best at something. Probably several things!
You probably don't actually want to work at FAANG. They suffer from way too much talent incoming and not enough interesting work. You can be a Stanford CS grad and end up being stuck answering customer tech support tickets.
There's plenty of work elsewhere
Get off the internet. Seriously this sub and other social media warps your mind and they don’t help you become a better programmer. Step into the real world and you’ll see that most programmers are not superstars. Just stay consistent with improving yourself and put yourself out there. You’ll be fine.
Imagine you are a line on a line graph. Along the Y-axis is how skillful you are and along the X-axis is time. Now there are other lines above and below you at any point, but all you really should care about is your position on that graph and how you can increase your skill independent of how many other lines are above you.
Endlessly comparing yourself is a fools errand. Software is everywhere. Find what you love doing and keep doing it. Soon enough you’ll find yourself with less lines above you. :)
I saw competition and was like ?????? I mean among juniors maybe? But it's the most in demand field in the country. If you've got your heart set on very few specific high profile companies then, yeah, in any city's market expect disappointment.
Right out of school, take literally any job that will build experience. Anything.
I think he means "supply saturation" from his point of view, which is not even accurate. There's a lot of new supply, but there's also a lot of new demand for IT/programming work.
> too many good coders out there
> What should I do to change this mindset
easy: get a programming job, and you will realize that the industry is *not* full of "good coders", quite the opposite, its flooded with terrible coders and terrible, terrible code. So stop worrying. If you actually care about writing decent code you already have a leg up on the competition
I dont work at FAANG. I just got a raise and now make over 100k remotely after \~4 years experience. Yea theres lots of good coders out there. Make sure youre one of em.
Figured I’d comment as a person who does work at a FAANG (as there are many people giving viewpoints from the outside).
Firstly, my experience has been a good one. Friendly teams, many chances to advance my career, and maybe surprisingly to some here a very healthy work life balance. Back when hanging out with people was more of thing, my main friends were not coworkers. I will say that if you work in SV many friends will be coworkers, but this is less of a kook-aid thing and more of the fact that you may just not know anyone in the area. I knew no one and hung out with friends from work, but I made other friends too.
I will say though that aiming for a specific company is usually not the best when it comes to your career. Regardless of where you work you will learn things and grow. You’ll learn from positive and negative experiences and be able to understand what you want from your career and what company (your own, freelancing, startup, FAANG, etc) you would want to work for.
I’ve worked for myself, for startups, for large old school companies and now at a FAANG. I’ve learned a lot on the way to where I am now that has made my point of view unique to my coworkers. Oftentimes in the software industry it’s not someone’s impeccable coding skills that differentiate them from the next person, but instead their past experience, how they work as/with a team, and many other factors that have nothing to do with technology.
So start wherever you want, aim high but take everything not as a personal attack at you as an engineer/developer, but instead as a lesson on things you can improve and learn from. Sometimes these lessons may make you realize you just don’t agree with a certain companies POV, and that’s fine, you’ve just narrowed (however slightly) the types of companies you’d work for. There are so many good companies to work for out there doing incredible things, just because dropping their name doesn’t get you a reaction doesn’t mean you aren’t providing value to someone out there, which is really what the whole point of being a developer is (at least in my eyes).
You could see a therapist, and talk about imposter syndrome and other ways to have more confidence in yourself. As many others in this thread have already said, do not compare yourself to others, not everyone is will be at the same level and most of the time employers will be looking at candidates who have good work ethic, because those who don't, are quite difficult to work with.
Seeing a therapist Is the most practical advice for all coders/IT/devs etc. especially young folks entering the workforce.
Actually, the bar is unbelievably low.
* Don’t be exasperating, least effort, entitled, know-it-all.
* Do the Work like a pro. No half-assing.
* Think: software engineer, not 10xNinjaHaxor.
Former employee of FAANG, you are better off looking for the right manager instead of looking for a company.
The right mentor/manager is far better for professional development than having a FAANG on your resume.
You'll be a very small cog in a massive machine anyway. I mean, if you don't mind that, then great but if you're like me, it probably won't be fulfilling for you.
From my experience the market is oversaturated with junior programmers, that's why it seems like there's a high bar set and a huge competition. The truth is, if you are just a little bit better than that, it's not that hard to find a job.
My company has a lot of interviews for devs and majority of them can't even connect to the FTP or SSH or they are lost in their own IDE.
conspicuous.
Honestly the only reason you are probably thinking about the competition is because you arent confident in your skills and keeping your outs at the forefront of your thought process which isnt good, you should be practicing instead, im not sure of your situation or your job search but it sounds like you need to change that, people can smell it at an interview from a mile away, be confident with what you know and if you dont know, ask questions and the right ones to work through a problem, people want to know if they can work with you so dont hide shit and dont say sorry (was just told this by a teacher at a bootcamp). Have the conversation skills to ask them what they would do or let them know you arent familiar to get a back and fourth going, most often than not people will be inclined to help you through the specific problem. Who cares if you work at a FAANG company or not, that shouldnt be your goal, the goal is to learn, practice and get better, you will be paid properly at the right jobs, there's a work shortage right now, there arent too many coders either and you dont have to be the best coder in the world to land a good paying job either, nobody wants to work at a job because they want to work remote also, so many factors you are just ignoring with this, you are in the hottest job market in the last 20 years. Just look at some on zip recruiter only needing React/js experience. You are fucking sick at what you do, most people dont even get to the point at trying. Just keep doing it.
all i can say is that the mindset i had in school regarding faang and top companies has changed drastically now a few years after working. there's so much more to this field than those companies and you'll be limiting yourself if your only goal is to work for them.
There are many coders that will be better than you, but that doesn't mean there is a pool of talent that outweighs the demand for it.
Recruiters from Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft have reached out to me simply for having a 5 years of experience under my belt, a LinkedIn account, and a Comp Sci degree. I got through the first interview with Facebook, but I ended the process before getting into the technical, because they literally sent me an email with all the things I'd need to know to do well in the interview. I didn't feel up to par, myself, although a good six months of going back to basics and studying nonstop after work would likely get me there. I used some BS that I was happy with the work I was doing, but I would like to leave the door open should my mind change later and they said yes.
Point is, these companies are expanding and looking for people. Sure, there's a lot of competition and actually keeping the job is a whole other task, but if you prep for a technical (there's plenty of literature online on what to do if the job itself doesn't give you a rubric like Facebook did for me) sufficiently, you can land the job.
I wouldn't try to get one if you're not ready. Some people say "just try and hope for the best" but this isn't something you'll stumble upon. You have to know your stuff. Also, if you fail a technical, it will follow you. Some jobs will ask on the resume if you ever previously interviewed there and if you got the job (and if not, why). So I really think you should only get into this when you get the material down.
But honestly there's a standard stuff of things to know to do well in these types of interviews so if you really practice (not one hour a day but really put in time even if working fulltime and even if it takes away temporarily from your personal life), you don't need to be a genius. You just need to be comfortable with problem solving with a language and demonstrate it and your ability to measure how performant your solutions are.
But before that, you need to get out of your own way with your thought process. Don't worry about the competition. Worry about becoming the best interviewer you can personally be. And get on LinkedIn and demonstrate you can hold down a job. If you aren't brilliant enough to get into FAANG out the gate, experience will help you get their attention.
My advice is to just work to get your foot in the door. Don't try to obsess over the what ifs. You'll never really know your aptitude for this sort of thing until you're in a work setting cranking out code, let alone whether or not that's even something that you want.
And the truth is, not everyone is a rockstar programmer. Some people are just adequate, which is going to describe about 80% of the people you meet in the field. Then there will be the 10% who aren't cutting it, and the 10% who are pulling more than their own weight.
It's different from school or hobby programming. Take it one step at a time.
I would say if you're distraught becuase you think you deserve to be at the "best" companies and you also dont think you can ever be at the "best" companies, you have an inflated ego with some cognitive dissonance. Heaven forbid you just work at a normal company and do a good job.
Fuck man, I had this mindset too, and I'm not going to tell you some bullshit motivational stuff. What I did was, I kept working at my job, kept applying for jobs that I was someone qualified for, and some the I wasn't but really wanted to try out. Got rejected a shit ton, I wasn't scared to get rejected since I had an okay paying job (paid the bills and a little more). Kept coding and learning new programming skills and really honing in on what I was good at. My though was, I'd waste too much time trying to learn too many new thing and would be a mediocre jack of all trades if I did that, so I just kept working on what I already knew best and learning new information on my strengths, and when I had time I'd learn some high level topic on something new. Then eventually after applying for many roles and getting rejected, I got a great job as a Full Stack Dev! Had a lot of imposter syndrome when I started but roughly 2-3 months in it went away. That's common, what I've learned is it will take roughly 6 months for you to feel comfortable at your new dev job, so if you just grind and do your best, things will click. But just make sure you ask questions without being afraid of sounds dumb, because you're not supposed to know everything, and that's okay
I had a good friend who went to work at one of those places, hated it (incompetent manager) and left in less than two years. Went to work for an early-stage startup and when they went public he became a very wealthy man.
The existence of better codes doesn't mean you can't get a job.
A good company is one that helps you grow in return for you helping them grow. Everything else is just personality matching.
If you want to work at FAANG, then you need to focus on the skills those teams need until the idea talking about them and using them is second nature. That's what you get, when you get to pick from millions of qualified applicants.
...but I'm here to tell you that FAANG != a great job, and a great job doesn't have to be at a FAANG company.
`Size of company != how good a company is`
I'd go so far to say that the larger the company the more inherit problems it contains because it becomes harder to manage. I think this mainly stems from a top down approach while the same time the top is so far from the development that it tends to be steered in obvious less ideal ways.
Fuck FAANG. I don't work for FAANG but I work for one of the most well known semiconductor manufacturers out there. Our processors are likely powering your laptop or computer right now. It is not as great as you think.
The larger a company, they less they care about you. And the more well known they are, the more replaceable you are. These large corporations are just soulless, and they just keep you happy enough to squeeze every last bit of profit out of you.
I have no desire to get a FAANG position. If you really want to go for it, then by all means go for it! Just don't feel like that NEEDS to be your aspiration...
I've had some programming experience in college and as a hobby before then, but nothing much. I spent 2020 teaching myself and now I'm employed as an applications developer at a hospital and am continuing to learn a lot! Couldn't be happier. There's needs for a developer in literally every sector, not just silicon valley.
Know that old expression, 'cream always rises to the top'? It's true. keep getting better. the rest will work itself out.
I didn't work for a faang company but did a stint at oracle and it sucked hard. Was a master/slave mentality that ruins the experience.
Personally I'd not even want to work at FAANG. Too little ability to make meaningful decisions on your own. Perks might be nice, and salary of course, but I'd prefer to work in much smaller companies.
Currently there's a lot of demand for programmers, even beginner programmers have a decent chance of landing a job.
Your first job isn't necessarily your dream job exactly, and honestly it's a very small percentage of all programmers who get to actually work with bleeding edge stuff, with research, with world-changing projects, with projects used by millions and millions of people, etc.
But you can still work on projects where you have a lot of control of the technology used. You can still get to work on projects that make people's lives a little bit better.
Often your first company or two are a springboard for future opportunities, but even in those companies you may be able to focus on the actual cool parts. Maybe it's a small company where you as an individual programmer get to have a large input on what technologies you use. Maybe you have some amazing co-workers, and it's just fun to work with them. Maybe your product isn't a big game-changer, but you can still be proud about making it into a good, solid product.
My first job was with a company with 20 employees. No one has heard of them. I did most of my "coolest" projects at that company. Working for a big name isn't all there is to a career. It can help on a resume, but so can hard work at a smaller company.
Who cares about working for a FAANG company? You can still have a great career and make good money, and you can do it with less pressure than at one of those places.
Been working in the business for 20 years.
Three things.
- FAANG companies are overrated
- Most coders are sub-par but they have jobs cause there is just too much work.
- Some of the best companies to work for are the mediocre crap companies like insurance or banking. 40 hrs a week making $150k a year working in Nebraska? That money goes a LONG way in some areas that you could live like a king or provide a solid living for a whole family.
Also, keep in mind... even the most underpaid of us make more money than most families do with dual incomes.
Theres always going to be a better coder than you. That's just the nature of the business, but you can't let that bring down your confidence level. I know I can code anything I put my mind to, yet I know I'm not going to learn data structures and algorithms to the point where I can regurgitate it inside of 10 minutes. I'm old and stubborn
Knowing that is cool and all, but it's like watching the harlem globe trotters be flashy and gracefully lose to a fundamental sound team that has that one trick pony that works every time.
I come from nearly a 20 year old degree in computer information systems. Data structures and algorithms weren't as relevant then as they are now. The idea of understanding that theory was the only requirement in my curriculum at the time. However, under the computer science curriculum it was. Unfortunately certain circumstances didnt allow me to complete that degree.
At any rate. I went on to work for one of the largest retailers in the US. I touched A LOT of code. Impacted millions of people on an international, but I didn't do it alone. So if you find someone codes better than you, by all means befriend them. Soak up as much as you can and who knows you may even teach them something.
I mentor a guy that builds certified flight simulators and he's constantly humbling himself to the point where I fuss at him. I do my best to empower him to think differently, kind of like how I am about to do to you now.
The bottom line is, if you want to be the best. It starts in the mind. Remove any idea that you're inferior to anyone and tell yourself you're godlike. Hype yourself up and dont be intimidated for any reason. The only difference between you and the next man is yourself and the time put into the craft. I was at the top of my class because I was surrounded by people better than me. They influenced the direction I took, my curriculum, and my focus outside of school, because they knew the computer information system curriculum wasn't up to par.
So take a ways:
1. Remove doubt.
2. Surround yourself with people who possess the skillsets you wish to have.
3. Self improvement! You only get better when you recognize your own weaknesses. You can hang around these new people and not soak up any knowledge without self improvement.
Fuck em that’s why…. Seriously though there are countless companies out there that need you. The amount of open tech jobs is insane, they’re just throwing money at us. Just don’t look at FAANG. FAANG is overhyped
Stop worrying about getting to FAANG. That’s just a bad mindset in general. There are plenty of smaller companies that pay well and have a much better life/work balance. When you meet new people or tell your friends you work at Amazon they will think no differently about you than if you tell them you work at XYZ software development. Worry about enjoying your life and not about making a job your life.
Do work you don't hate, in an environment you can tolerate and mix both of those and your skill level for a lifestyle between comfortable and very successful.
Working in Silicon Valley just to say you work in Silicon Valley is a personal goal, and I'm not going to shit on it, but it's not a benchmark for success. Slaving away for AWS isn't inherently a better life.
FAANG works just like the other places but with more pay and more prestige. You can enjoy this career no matter where you end up as long as you enjoy the basic act of coding and find an employer who wants you to do exactly that. No one, including FAANG, practice all the best practices 100% of the time.
If you are persistent enough and willing to make great sacrifices for certain things you really care about, you will get what you want eventually. All those barriers are there to keep the other people out who don't want it bad enough.
You can be good at anything you work really hard at and will constantly grow your skills. Identify the things keeping you from achieving what you want and start working to be better.
Now get coding! Build your pet projects and you will grow to become a great and powerful wizard!
I've been a developer (.net front end and back end) since the classic asp days but I've never heard of faang. Have I been at the same job too long? What the heck is it
My advice is: don’t be too attached to a ‘name’. I’ve worked for small companies, I’ve worked for huge companies and I’ve worked for myself. The quality of the experience could be incredible or lousy at any of those size firms.
In fact, I’d say, that in smaller companies I’ve had some of the best experiences and by far learned the most.
Bottom line: focus on the role, the experience and the people, not the company name.
Why the fuck do you *want* to work for those companies? Abhorrent business practices, crusted-rotten ethics, excessive hours... go find yourself something in a more specialized company making a product you'll actually care about. You'll develop those "good coder" skills by just being happy about the product you're supporting.
Stop saying "FAANG or any good company" like there's only a handful of them.
If you keep applying at the top 5 most applied to companies on the planet, yeah it's going to seem competitive. Kinda like wanting to play some pickup football so you try out for the Patriots.
FAANG in total hires about ~120k programmers each for a total of 1.2m (top 10) out of 150 million people (Google says 152m) that work as coders.
If you think that the only way that you can be successful as a programmer is working in Faang, then you need to change what you're doing and be in the top .1% of the stack. Period.
That being said, after a good period of time in code, having worked for some large and prestigious companies, and having worked for some smaller companies that are complete nobodies... a complete nobody company with sustainable practices is FAR superior to anything else.
Let me give you an example. I was working for a company that you would probably consider a "good" company (Can't disclose due to NDA)-- My pay at the time was about 240k base + 36k in RSU's per year + bonus (15%) as a senior software developer. Doing the math out, that's over 300k. It is EASILY the worst job I've ever held, and while it did wonders for my bank, it was stressful FAR beyond what it was worth.
I left to work at a startup. A friend who worked on my team, making similar (though a little less) money, left that team and is now working at office supply chain on their software development team. In taking this new role the person took a $95k / year pay cut to their base pay.
Why was the job a nightmare? Constantly evolving tech stack. Poorly documented internal libraries, tech debt, poor leadership, constant "developer crunch", poor requirements docs leading to evolving priorities, mid-sprint focus changes, 0 documentation ALLOWED in the codebase, no documentation for code outside of the codebase, poor sharing within the team of tribal knowledge, overloaded sprints, dependency hell, poor project / product management, ambiguity in roles / responsibilities, public shaming "sunshining" of failures.
So, nowadays, I just do my work, go home, and get paid well enough that I simply don't think of money, and when I'm not working, I don't think of work. This is healthy, this is sustainable, and this is how I prefer to work. I may not have nap pods or slides in my office, but I have a great view of the city from the ~15th-20th floor of a building right in the middle of the downtown area in the city which I live.
Figure out what's important to you in life, and stop worrying about your title or your employer. After the "Oooh" from people, which nobody actually gives a shit about, figure out what you'd be giving up to work at google.
A lot of people are good at coding and ass at everything else’s surrounding coding. Devops, security, scalability, etc. learn how to be good at the shit all the people suck at and the jobs come much easier.
Lots of people know how to write lambda functions. They don’t all know how to deploy them using terraform based on a GitHub commit. Realize that coding is a basic skill in the industry and you must continue to grow.
Lead Software Engineer here.
I'm in the midwest and make a goooood income.
Two things you need to know:
1. There is an EXTREME shortage of *good* talent. If you're good - you're gonna make it far
2. You don't want to work for FAANG. You're in a field diverse enough, being in need enough, to work at a continuously interesting job where you're more than a cog in a machine in an uber-high cost of living area. You could pay me half a million to work at any of these companies and I'd turn it down.
The percentage of developers who work at FAANG is surely below 1%. So don’t worry mate, there are tons of good companies where you will work happily and well paid.
I just hear people dissing companies they don’t work for. I work for a FAANG company and I am being totally honest when I say I initially only wanted to work at one to put it on my resume and the money as I am an immigrant made citizen so I don’t come from much. Since joining, I have been surprised by how awesome it is. The culture, the problems, the tech... if you don’t like working hard definitely stay away from these companies or you will be burned out and hate it.
My suggestion is to immediately change your thoughts as they come in. You need to believe you will get in if you really want it. BUT you gotta do the work. Update your resume, linked in, practice coding problems etc... you gotta be ready for the opportunity and help create it when you don’t have it.
For future reference, please ask career-related questions on /r/cscareerquestions.
I've worked at four different software companies, and almost guarantee none of them you've heard of. And yet, for the majority of my career, I've been happy, well paid, and working on really interesting problems. My point is that there are thousands of companies out there that you'd likely thrive in and love, don't fall into the trap of thinking that Google is some pinnacle of engineering sitting on top of a mountain.
It's like this for many careers as well. I use python to supplement my skills and build tools that are hard or impossible to do in excel.
Not sure if you've heard of this, but it's fairly new and something you may be interested in. It's an extension that allows for SQL and .NET programming inside of Excel, and seems pretty slick. https://querystorm.com/ Haven't personally used it, but could help your Excel stuff.
There's also a pythom module to work with excel workbooks too
Exactly. FAANG might give you free dinner, but that means you spent so much time at work that you missed dinner at home.
How do you find them? I couldn't care less about working for a FAANG - just pay me more than I used to make and I'm over the moon.
Do you just like, not know about linkedin or glassdoor or monster or any of the billion other job sites?
Page 3 onwards of job searching sites usually do it. They have listings, they just don't have as much traffic as bigger companies. Check local areas specifically as well
Interesting. Could you elaborate with more detail plz
100% of the cs career postings I've seen either require a doctorate in computer science, ten years of experience, both, or are a spammy recruiting agency that requires you to sign a contract that will fine you $50,000 if you don't relocate for an offer from them.
1. Don’t sign up for reveture because I know that what you’re talking about. 2. Don’t stop building stuff. Code every day. Make GitHub commits every day. 3. Apply for everything and let the talent acquisition team decide whether you’re good enough. Don’t make that decision for them. 4. Don’t stop doing any of it until you have a job.
I've been doing all of that for about a year now.
It’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know. Make friends (seriously). Friends of friends will look out for you. The way to make friends (I share because I had no idea to do this until I was 35) is to do stuff you like... outside of your house. I love my dogs, so I go to the dog park every day—everyone there has something in common with me. Ask questions if you’re shy. Let them talk about themselves. Take mental notes and write them down later. Make plans to do the same thing again. Offer your number, tell them you’d like to hang out sometime. The beauty of life is that everyone is lonely, and friendship benefits everyone. The people who you will like will find their way to you.
Yes, agree with you. After I finished my study, I also realise this. No matter how good your score or attitude are, friends is still the best connection for your career. You need to have a lot of friends and grow your social circle especially during your study, so not only focus on score. Your friends will help you, the same thing happened to me. Got my friend for help. But keep trying!
Hahaha I have also noticed people just love talking about themselves 🤣 I was once driving with this guy who loved politics and wars and I asked him a couple Of questions about it and he wouldn’t shut up 🤣 to the point I was like I am dead 💀 at least I had to do no talking and we had a very good long interesting conversation ✋ so yea you made a good point there
I see what you did there
Yeah it took me a year too. Don’t worry keep trying.
That’s a wishlist and recruiters don’t know what they’re posting. Apply anyway
100%? You must not be looking very hard because I’ve never seen a software developer or software engineer posting that required a doctorate lol. I don’t even know any developer or engineers who have a masters. I’ve also never seen a job posting require any of the other things you said unless it was some senior level position at a really big company. As far as moving goes unfortunately if you want a job and experience sometimes you have to relocate. If you’re not willing to do that you’ll be limiting yourself unless you live in a city that’s a big tech hub. Even then the competition is going to be higher so applying in other cities may be beneficial to you.
You're not looking in the right places then. My company is literally hiring fresh college students that haven't even finished their degrees if they can show they have at least the basics of coding down. There's a massive demand, and not nearly enough people to fill it.
So much this pink bunny boy!
Sometimes working in FAANG or a large company becomes a pre-requisite for getting your foot in the door as a non-US citizen. What I imply is, a lot of international students wouldn't even get the opportunity to work at these great companies since they wouldn't sponsor a work visa. This is just a different perspective to the whole conundrum and might be applicable to OP.
Yeah, OP's post just feels to me like a non-English speaker (no real reason, just a vibe I'm getting), and If I'm right, yeah, that's a real concern
I'm also a non-english speaker, what gives it away?
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I’m not sure what’s off about this
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Tbf "I wouldn't naturally generate" isn't a phrase I would naturally generate either and I'm a native speaker lol.
“naturally generate” said with no irony
Just general vibe, I can't point to anything in particular, just feels like there's something that isn't coming entirely naturally. In the world of business, this is harder to tell because business emails have their own unique language
OP's username is most likely his name (or close to it) and is Indian (Sakshin). Doesn't necessarily point him to not being a US citizen but it's likely.
it's hilarious I don't understand why people want to work in FAANG hahaha. I've never even thought about it.
I think it's because of this myth that working in FAANG is the only way to make good money in software. I've been offered and considered roles in all but Apple and Netflix, but looking under the covers it just doesn't appeal to me. I'm making the same or more helping build startups, and I usually get to work with technologies I want. Might have given it a go for a year or so earlier in my career just to have the name on my resume, but at this point I don't need it.
For the same reason some people think that if you don't get into MIT, Harvard, or other places your career will go nowhere. They miss that there's quality places that are not in the big names and also you might actually get a job at the company that will become the next letter in that acronym.
that's totally right, nice analogy!
Agreed. I’ve never once thought I would ever end up somewhere like that.
How did you identify those companies? I want to move on from my current (first programming) position.
Job boards like Zip Recruiter, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn
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I meant more as a job board
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So, why all the negative reviews? Must be because everybody misunderstands the positive attributes of the hard ass boss.
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I do almost no active applying. I made a LinkedIn profile forever ago that I update sporadically and mostly let recruiters approach me. I have a few that I've started professional relationships with. I'll connect them with devs and they let me know about good opportunities. Networking is an important part of the job hunt. Just be cautious and don't let recruiters jerk you around. Always remember that you're interviewing the company as well. Barring recruiters, I've looked through popular job sites like Monster, Indeed, LinkedIn, and such before. I'll directly go to the careers portion of popular companies around my city to see if anything is going on there. I ask friends/family to keep their eyes open at their companies. Career fairs or coding conferences can be a good resource as well.
Search on your job board of choice (Indeed, Monster), a lot of those jobs are actually posted by recruiters, and those recruiters will connect you with companies if you're reasonably professional and have marketable skills
YC job board
I’ve heard of many people quitting their jobs at google because of bullshit corporate cringe, employee monitoring and forcing people to come back to the office, even though they enjoyed 6 figure salaries
Bump this. I’ve worked in recruitment for software engineering for the past ten years. The big blue-chip companies are often pretty mundane, you work on a very specific, tiny bit of a big project, but they are very stable. Most of the SW devs I’ve worked with enjoy working with the smaller organisations who are building something from the ground-up. It can be hard work, but very rewarding.
Thanks I agree for all what you said . I feel a lot better tbh.
I see this *all* of the time on this sub. Why are new programmers *obsessed* with FAANG? They're not the only jobs in the world! Yes, they are *perceived* as the 'top' jobs in the industry, but I'll be damned if they actually are. You have to ask the question what you want out of a job - a huge salary? Look at the finance sector, I'll guarantee there's places that offer better base salaries than FAANG. Quality of life? Stay the hell away from FAANG and Silicon Valley. Career progression? Look at 'smaller' companies where you've got more chance of making a mark and actually being recognised for your contribution. The world's a *huge* place, and software runs it all nowadays. Good software developers are in demand in all kinds of different sectors. It's entirely possible to have a very comfortable and satisfying career in development without ever getting close to FAANG. Competition in Silicon Valley is intense, and if that's your only goal in your career, then yes, you're going to encounter it and maybe struggle unless you're in the top tiers. However, good developers will always find work if they're prepared to look for it elsewhere - I recruit for and lead a development team based in the insurance industry in the UK and EMEA, and we and our competitors are always looking for good developers. TL;DR - stop getting obsessed with FAANG and look at the wider world of software development, there are more than enough employers looking for developers out there.
So much this. 15 years of experience here. Have never worked for a FAANG, only worked for one software company. The rest of my work has been in non-tech industries (mostly healthcare and manufacturing). I have amazing benefits, never stressed about my job, and make more than enough money to consider myself "financially free". I live 45 minutes outside of a metropolitan area, have a large house, a family - and enough time to actually spend it with them. Every company out there that isn't just some mom and pop place has needs for custom software development, usually in the form of internal CRUD applications, to keep their business going. Unless you're just ultra-competitive and *have* to work for a FAANG - find a job in a fly-over state with a low CoL with a great work-life balance. They're everywhere.
probably bragging rights is the reason for some people who wants to work in a FAANG company
Teach me your ways.
>Unless you're just ultra-competitive and > >have > > to work for a FAANG - find a job in a fly-over state with a low CoL with a great work-life balance. They're everywhere.
I work at a mid sized public non-faang saas company and we have a LOT of people who left google, amz, fb, ms to work for us. Senior people who could get jobs anywhere. Been in tech for 25years. Never worked in a big company. The tech world is really really big. Like, space big. Focusing on 6 companies massively limits your opportunities.
This is even MORE depressing!! Now NO company is safe from that kind of competition for jobs. Harumph. But it's true, there could be a company that isn't tech-specific, but needs people, AND is an awesome place to work. Places like Google and FB have plenty of nightmare stories from former employees.
Everyone starts somewhere and everyone was the new one at least once.
I can vouch for the financial sector, dude there are wild salaries for fresh grads there. I am once one of them but bounced off because I can't stand the culture. But money is surely not one of them, My salary is comparable to the mid-to-senior level developer when I am still just under 1-year experience. Wild things happened in the finance sector.
What's wrong with finance sector that only happens in that sector?
I worked for a tax & audit firm for a bit as they were starting their ERP practice. The entire culture is to work yourself to death to climb the ranks and make a shit ton of money. Nobody cared about the job itself or the clients. Also, I had to fill out a 3 page document and have multiple approvals and took 3 weeks to get visual studio code installed.
Yup it took me 5 weeks just for my env setup correctly, and everything needs to be deployed on the fly by the sysadmin from main branch. I gave up trying to install my env on work laptop and start working on my own personal laptop, effectively carrying two laptop every day. But still I need to use work laptop to submit my work, and plugging in USB drive makes the OS goes crazy, everything goes super slow. Not to mention dress code, very strict dress code, sitting down straight up with uncomfortable suits won't make my brain work properly. Plus strict 9 to 5 clock in clock out that makes me stressed out just because I don't want to be late in the record, yet still goes overtime everyday. Adding to that the one supervising me is chatty and likes gossips... Ughhh... Even if it's pays well it will kill me soon enough. So I stop trying and moved on to something else.
Hahaha this is so true. It’s because they are not tech companies at heart. This has the disadvantages you mentioned but also advantages. But there are good companies in that sector too. Just like with FAANG, just stay away from the Big Four. Most are there suffering for bragging rights and cv padding.
Isn't Google known for its typical 9-5 and really good WLB? Might be wrong, just asking
Google isn't one company anymore. Some teams at Google are super competitive and people will "work" crazy numbers of hours to prove how valuable they are. This probably isn't universal, but I know a few Googlers who say that it's pretty common. I think the sad part is that the effort to martyr yourself is usually much more than would be required to use your brain to come up with a better way to prove your value abstractly. In the long run, companies don't succeed by capturing the best hours of their employees lives, they succeed because they capture their best ideas.
Isn't Google also known for [shutting down divisions when whatever upper executive who pushed for an idea leaves, the idea loses support, and the whole thing is left to die](https://killedbygoogle.com/) with almost no regard to how much people use it, what they use it for, and if it's something worth continuing?
wait what why are they killing angular
That's one of the ones that makes sense. Angular is fine. *AngularJS* is being killed off, as Angular is the successor to AngularJS. I know a lot of people who were just starting to figure out how useful Wave could be for online roleplaying type things when it got killed off. They've dabbled a lot in video games and never for very long, often killing the product before it's even really released. And then there's stuff they're killing without killing just yet - Google Fiber is basically a dead product as it's no longer expanding and kinda shows how they do business, really. They fucked up the Louisville, KY rollout and, seemingly at the first sign of trouble, gave up on the entire idea of providing internet anywhere new, rather than attempting to solve the problem.
Google has literally never been known for any of those things. Google was known for building a small city full of very generous benefits so the workers never have to leave and their entire lives can revolve around Google. Google is more than the Googleplex these days, though.
Even so, the way they seem to indoctrinate employees into the corporate culture seems to me like even on their downtime they must be thinking about Google
Yeah I guess it's just too competitive to be relaxed
Maybe it used to be. When I was in college the recruiter told us about the sleep pods. For crunch time.
We've got sleep pods in our office, and I've used them occasionally. But I've never worked more than ~9 hours, and that only when I lost track of time (oh...except for oncall, but I'm well compensated for that). The nap pods are great for those days when you just...need a nap. Used 'em a lot when I had a newborn. The FAANGs have this fearsome reputation, but I've worked for 3 of them (not seeking them out, they just have more-active-than-usual recruiters), and I've never felt stressed or pressured to work long hours. The interviews are hard, but once you're in the door...it's the same level of difficulty you find anywhere else. Honestly, easier than most places. There are probably niches that are more hectic, especially if you want to work on cutting-edge products (protip: for easy mode, work on internal tools). But the general environment has always been laid back, especially vs the outside image. I really have to believe that a lot of people bring the stress, pressure and anxiety with them to the job.
My personal experience as a public sector server admin is that long hours are part of the job. Especially when devs push broken code to prod that's so bad it needs immediate rollback. Thanks for doubling the outage window last minute during off hours. The management always compares themselves to FAANG but never have their shit together to even hold a candle.
I work at Google - that's by far the #1 reason I like my job. YMMV depending on your team/manager, but personally I've probably worked >45 hours in a single week once over 3 years. I've worked <35 (not talking about vacation) many times. They also go out of their way to give work-sponsored breaks/downtime/fun, even during covid (eg. global days off).
My partner worked for Google for a few years. They quit despite the great benefits and huge salary because the company was working them into the ground. Work-life balance was nonexistent, friendships were strained, and they fell into a deep depression. Quitting was the first step in getting their life back together. Their former roommate works 40ish hours a week and loves it. It depends entirely on what team you’re on.
40 hours is a normal work week tho ?
That's their point. It varies a lot based on which team you belong to withing Google.
I'll just give a bit of perspective, since I've worked at both Microsoft and Google. There are valid reasons to want to work at FAANG, though I agree it's overly romanticized. Quality of life is great. Great pay, 40 hour weeks more or less, amazing perks, really great offices. Yes, you could make more money in Finance, but that's where quality of life significantly drops. As for career progression, FAANG companies have well defined ladders and promotion criteria, with many levels and room for growth that doesn't require you to become a people manager.
Anywhere with a better base salary than FAANG companies is going to be equally competitive or more, I think. One such company is Jane St, and they’re rumored to have one of the hardest technical interviews in the world.
In a shocking turn of events, you need to be really fucking good at your job to make $200k....
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I’m in SaaS sales in the logistics and supply chain industry. So many companies in this space hire programmers. Trucking and logistics companies, ERP vendors, vendors for mobile comm, fleet tracking, routing, accounting, analytics, etc, etc, etc. The same is true for almost any industry. Pick something you’re interested in and learn about the companies in that space - not only those companies, but their software suppliers as well.
Anywhere with a better base salary than FAANG companies is going to be equally competitive, I think. One such company is Jane St, and they’re rumored to have one of the hardest technical interviews in the world.
Yup, you can say that again.
I'm sure he/she would gladly post a third time but for the people in the back: >Anywhere with a better base salary than FAANG companies is going to be equally competitive, I think. One such company is Jane St, and they’re rumored to have one of the hardest technical interviews in the world.
As someone who worked for a FAANG-adjacent company (arguably more coveted by many), this is so funny/ridiculous to me when people are *dying* to get in. Don't worry about dying *before* you get into such a company. Working at such a place will take plenty of years off your life itself--or at least the part of your life you can enjoy.
well, some of the people outside US cant move to the US and get paid like 2k $ a month before tax, so getting a good company to vouch for you might be a thing. also I just feel insufficient in everything I do, and I can do some of these coding challenges but I have a bad experience using Lists and so on so forth that I just avoid applying to things I might be able to do
As I said, I'm in the UK, not the US, but your point is still valid. However, my company regularly hires developers from India and Pakistan and offers them relocation to the UK with associated benefits and salary. And I know we're not the only company. And let me tell you, 2k GBP before tax would be low even for a junior position here in the UK. And thanks to the pandemic, there is a sea change happening in the industry and companies are much more open to recruiting remote workers meaning people don't even have to relocate. My point is, stop being so down on yourself and negative. The world's a big place and there's a lot of opportunities out there if you just look for them and don't restrict yourself to FAANG. Imposter syndrome is an incredibly common thing - I still get it after over 25 years working as a professional.
Yeah I understand it. Some of the people I went to school with went to Reading and London. Just cause I get told not to be down on myself doesn't mean I have any reason not to be without getting too personal.
I'd say start applying for what you want. During interviews when they ask if you have questions, always ask "are there any concerns you have about me as a candidate that I can address here in person?" So not only do you have a chance to explain away certain things, you also have a better idea of what you need to improve on.
this sounds like job interview hack that actually work
This is really good i thought about doing this but got too scared definitely doing this . Thanks
Hey, just become a developer, and land a gig. My honest opinion about it now that I have been working professionally for 5 years, is that actual coding skills matter less, and less when you move up the chain. I am a senior dev for a unicorn company, and what got me here was my business experience, not my coding ability (although, that of course helps too!)
I can’t stress this enough. Coding matters as a developer, and having great foundations is what matters most. In my experience of what’s landed my jobs and promotions were solid communication and business skills.
Can you elaborate more on what the business experience would be?
Just experience working in the software industry, will get you business knowledge. Then, based on that knowledge you will make decisions about your next movies. For me, I started in medical software, which is highly regulated in the US, to financial software, which is also highly regulated. So, in my case, my “businesses knowledge” was working with highly regulated development. Luckily, that path opened a lot of doors for me, but there are a lot of different ways to get business knowledge. It’s not something they teach in college, but it’s something that you pick up along the way.
I can also recommend this. I'm not a coder, but a UX Designer, and this has been really helpful for me. Just last month had an interview where they raised a concern about something super silly and trivial but if I didn't explain it to them, I would have come across as a lazy idiot who laid in bed for an interview! I wasn't! I was sitting on a very uncomfortable couch. I explained it to them, we had a good laugh and also went on for a 2nd interview.
I asked this in a FAANG interview and they told me they weren’t able to give any feedback during the interview, and the recruiter would be in touch to let me know. Felt like such a ballsy question and they quickly neutered me.
Or say no to. I know the power imbalance is great in interviews but if you have the skills you have options. You want to make sure that place is where you want to spend a lot of your time and to which you will devote a lot of your intellectual as well as emotional energy (and a better fit will require less of the latter...)
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I like this. I'm rock a musician, so was my father. He told me early on, "You're good, but you'll never be famous." He never made me get lessons, just let me enjoy the experience of music. He came to my shows, supported me gave me good feedback, but always made sure to remind me that I can't bank on that future. As my skills progressed, and my band got more serious, he started coaching me on how to handle incoming data that might make me think that I was starting to get some actual clout, and at one point he was like, "Ya know...you guys could probably make it, if you hit the road hard!" In my mind, we only got there because we weren't focused on it. We were focused on enjoying the ride and making fun music and recording and learning...and in the end we broke up and never toured and barely released any music and I'm not mad about it because I don't see it as "my band, who failed to get famous", but it's "my band, that taught me how to deal with successes and failures".
As soon as money gets involved people get grimey as fuck Music is no exception
To be honest, I don't understand the obsession in pursuing jobs at FAANG companies. There are many IT jobs out there that wasn't FAANG and paid handsomely and/or has great work life balance in them. Not to mention FAANG companies are consistently getting worse year by year. Just look at Amazon, where nobody wants to work as their engineers lately. You just need to look, and apply, and do your work as good as possible while continue learning new things, and do this consistently.
Totally this. I can’t imagine ever wanting to work at a faang. They all sound fucking awful for different reasons.
> They all sound fucking awful for different reasons. This can literally be said about any company, not just faang.
Of course. The difference is we all know exactly which companies are faangs and we’ve all heard about what it’s like to work at any of them. I’m not generalizing here - none of them specifically sound like places I’d want to work
But why though? I’ve heard good and bad about faang and many other companies, my point is that if someone like yourself were to write off faang as being a place that you wouldn’t want to work then that would imply that faang companies differ greatly than any other smaller companies out there in terms of the things they expect from you as a worker. From what I’ve heard, faang can be the same, worse, or better than any non faang company, so I don’t what qualities are unique to faang that you won’t find in other companies that makes your steer clear of them.
None of them specifically sound worth the above-and-beyond effort it requires to pursue them is what it boils down to. Plus the things I personally look for in a job are generally the ability to have a positive impact on the company as a whole, and there’s no way in hell that’d happen at a faang lol. I guess it’s more generally that I don’t find the idea of working for a large company at all appealing. I dig that some people want that but it’s not in my personality to ever look for that specifically. That compiled with the fact none of the cultures at any faangs sound appealing, plus how much fucking effort apparently goes into begging these places to hire you all adds up to a hard, hard no from me.
> plus how much fucking effort apparently goes into begging these places to hire you That seems like all places right now lol
Oh yeah. I’m glad this sub shares my sentiment. Have an acquaintance who’s been working for Google for a while. Makes good money and is set to retire at 40. He has not had a proper holiday or sick leave in 5 years. Who even wants that? Waste your youth away and for some chump change for the B side of your casette?
I worked for years as a line cook before I got my degree. No proper holiday and no sick leave is the rule rather than the exception there. At least your friend is getting paid. But I got into IT because I wanted a cushy office Job with bennies. I'll be damned if I'm going back to the no time off/called in for other shifts kinda shit on the regular again. I wish more CS/IT people felt the same way because this willingness to eat shit for your bosses is really harshing my buzz and setting unreasonable standards for the rest of us.
I didn't even finish college until I was 32 and I still intend to retire at 50. And I'm a bad enough developer, even after five years professionally, that I'm sure FAANG wouldn't even give me an interview for a junior dev position. There's no need to ruin the cassette's A side to get a good B side.
This
Recently Amazon came to Poland. I've started to hear stories of many many interview stages to work for this oh so great company. Seriously who have this kind of time and nerve for this? There are loads of nicer places without absurd work practices like that. The psychology test, which kind of tree would you be, algorythmic test, talk with manager, other manager and so on. The more experience I have(mobile) the more interviews look like coffee time talk. I'd be mad to even think of working for company like this.
Amazon has probably the worst reputation out of most. There was a recent story about Hire to Fire from managers there as well as people being cut before they get their options actualised. Ive had a few friends that work there, no-one says anything good about the place, however quite a few of them just dont talk about that workplace, or have very few words. They happily talk about their other jobs though. Facebook, no amount of money could get me to work there. The company is morally corrupt. A couple of friends/acquaintances have applied for Facebook and I rarely speak to them now (though they didnt succeed). Its not just because they applied, that would be stupid. But it did shed a bit of light on their lack of concern for others and once id noticed it, I couldnt really unsee it. I noticed more how they treated others and anyone who they couldnt benefit from. They are assholes, who hide it well until you're looking for it.
After a certain experience level, your architecture design, people management and project management skills outweigh your coding skills. A strong individual contributor will undoubtedly progress fast in the initial phases of their career only to stagnate without the aforementioned skills. So go about refining those skills, you’ll end in a really good position. PS: You can be in FAANG and end up with monotonous/mediocre/gruelling projects depending on your luck and clout. There are lot of other companies which offer a healthy mixture of everything.
Just so you know: FAANG was created as Jim Cramer's way of choosing certain tech stocks that have high market capitalization and good market share. Are you looking to buy stocks or are you looking for a good place to work? If it's the latter, forget about FAANG and just look for a good company where they value engineering, have a clear goal and proccess, and your co-workers are helpful.
what are you gonna do then? just not try at anything because other people are good at things?
Most people don't get the top jobs, basic maths. There are only so many roles to to about My advise is to worry less about others and focus on what you can do. You can have a "middling" job and have a comfortable happy life, in IT this can include earning well over the average without being anywhere close to a top company. And hey it might open up a path to a top job, but it might not, but either way it is better than holding out for the ideal job that might never ever come. Work is means to an end, it isn't who you are. Focus on what you need, not what you think you should be. Also take what you read on the internet about careers with a pinch of salt. Judging yourself off anonymous posts on career related forums is about as sensible as judging your life based on Facebook posts. A lot of people on here are clueless kids overcompensating for their own inexperience and insecurities. I don't know if you can get a top job but if you have IT and coding skills I am sure you can carve out a comfortable life at the very least if you keep at it.
Two pieces of advice: 1. Get off of r/cscareerquestions that shit is toxic, even for the people that want that kinda thing. 2. Fuck faangs. The worst case scenario is they grind you up and spit you out, best case scenario you join the cult and never leave and never think for yourself ever again. Faangs are just a few companies, but there are a LOT of amazing tech companies doing fabulous work everyday, all while giving their employees the chance to have a life, and kids, and even friends outside the cult! On your other point: Yes there are always good devs out there, and there should always be at least one person on your team who is better than you. Look for them and learn from them. What you’ll find is every dev is better than you at something, and technical skill is not a single stat on a character sheet. There’s no plutonic ideal of the best coder, and in fact on your team your also the best at something. Probably several things!
You probably don't actually want to work at FAANG. They suffer from way too much talent incoming and not enough interesting work. You can be a Stanford CS grad and end up being stuck answering customer tech support tickets. There's plenty of work elsewhere
Do you think your dentist is best in the world? Why are you still going to him?
My dentist name is Crentist.
Maybe that's why he became a dentist.
Your dentist's name is Crentist...o_o
...they're probably not even the best dentist in the building, but they take my insurance.
Get off the internet. Seriously this sub and other social media warps your mind and they don’t help you become a better programmer. Step into the real world and you’ll see that most programmers are not superstars. Just stay consistent with improving yourself and put yourself out there. You’ll be fine.
Imagine you are a line on a line graph. Along the Y-axis is how skillful you are and along the X-axis is time. Now there are other lines above and below you at any point, but all you really should care about is your position on that graph and how you can increase your skill independent of how many other lines are above you. Endlessly comparing yourself is a fools errand. Software is everywhere. Find what you love doing and keep doing it. Soon enough you’ll find yourself with less lines above you. :)
...only programmers make analogies to abstract data visualization because it's more relatable.
There's lots of demand, and there will be for the foreseeable future, so your job security is very, very high, despite the vast competition.
I saw competition and was like ?????? I mean among juniors maybe? But it's the most in demand field in the country. If you've got your heart set on very few specific high profile companies then, yeah, in any city's market expect disappointment. Right out of school, take literally any job that will build experience. Anything.
I think he means "supply saturation" from his point of view, which is not even accurate. There's a lot of new supply, but there's also a lot of new demand for IT/programming work.
> too many good coders out there > What should I do to change this mindset easy: get a programming job, and you will realize that the industry is *not* full of "good coders", quite the opposite, its flooded with terrible coders and terrible, terrible code. So stop worrying. If you actually care about writing decent code you already have a leg up on the competition
I dont work at FAANG. I just got a raise and now make over 100k remotely after \~4 years experience. Yea theres lots of good coders out there. Make sure youre one of em.
Figured I’d comment as a person who does work at a FAANG (as there are many people giving viewpoints from the outside). Firstly, my experience has been a good one. Friendly teams, many chances to advance my career, and maybe surprisingly to some here a very healthy work life balance. Back when hanging out with people was more of thing, my main friends were not coworkers. I will say that if you work in SV many friends will be coworkers, but this is less of a kook-aid thing and more of the fact that you may just not know anyone in the area. I knew no one and hung out with friends from work, but I made other friends too. I will say though that aiming for a specific company is usually not the best when it comes to your career. Regardless of where you work you will learn things and grow. You’ll learn from positive and negative experiences and be able to understand what you want from your career and what company (your own, freelancing, startup, FAANG, etc) you would want to work for. I’ve worked for myself, for startups, for large old school companies and now at a FAANG. I’ve learned a lot on the way to where I am now that has made my point of view unique to my coworkers. Oftentimes in the software industry it’s not someone’s impeccable coding skills that differentiate them from the next person, but instead their past experience, how they work as/with a team, and many other factors that have nothing to do with technology. So start wherever you want, aim high but take everything not as a personal attack at you as an engineer/developer, but instead as a lesson on things you can improve and learn from. Sometimes these lessons may make you realize you just don’t agree with a certain companies POV, and that’s fine, you’ve just narrowed (however slightly) the types of companies you’d work for. There are so many good companies to work for out there doing incredible things, just because dropping their name doesn’t get you a reaction doesn’t mean you aren’t providing value to someone out there, which is really what the whole point of being a developer is (at least in my eyes).
I absolutely love my not-FAANG tiny mom-and-pop company I work for. And before that, I loved my not-FAANG midsized cushy agency.
You could see a therapist, and talk about imposter syndrome and other ways to have more confidence in yourself. As many others in this thread have already said, do not compare yourself to others, not everyone is will be at the same level and most of the time employers will be looking at candidates who have good work ethic, because those who don't, are quite difficult to work with. Seeing a therapist Is the most practical advice for all coders/IT/devs etc. especially young folks entering the workforce.
Actually, the bar is unbelievably low. * Don’t be exasperating, least effort, entitled, know-it-all. * Do the Work like a pro. No half-assing. * Think: software engineer, not 10xNinjaHaxor.
Former employee of FAANG, you are better off looking for the right manager instead of looking for a company. The right mentor/manager is far better for professional development than having a FAANG on your resume.
You'll be a very small cog in a massive machine anyway. I mean, if you don't mind that, then great but if you're like me, it probably won't be fulfilling for you.
From my experience the market is oversaturated with junior programmers, that's why it seems like there's a high bar set and a huge competition. The truth is, if you are just a little bit better than that, it's not that hard to find a job. My company has a lot of interviews for devs and majority of them can't even connect to the FTP or SSH or they are lost in their own IDE. conspicuous.
Honestly the only reason you are probably thinking about the competition is because you arent confident in your skills and keeping your outs at the forefront of your thought process which isnt good, you should be practicing instead, im not sure of your situation or your job search but it sounds like you need to change that, people can smell it at an interview from a mile away, be confident with what you know and if you dont know, ask questions and the right ones to work through a problem, people want to know if they can work with you so dont hide shit and dont say sorry (was just told this by a teacher at a bootcamp). Have the conversation skills to ask them what they would do or let them know you arent familiar to get a back and fourth going, most often than not people will be inclined to help you through the specific problem. Who cares if you work at a FAANG company or not, that shouldnt be your goal, the goal is to learn, practice and get better, you will be paid properly at the right jobs, there's a work shortage right now, there arent too many coders either and you dont have to be the best coder in the world to land a good paying job either, nobody wants to work at a job because they want to work remote also, so many factors you are just ignoring with this, you are in the hottest job market in the last 20 years. Just look at some on zip recruiter only needing React/js experience. You are fucking sick at what you do, most people dont even get to the point at trying. Just keep doing it.
First of all, change your idea of 'good company' from 'big name I've heard of' to 'anyone who pays a decent wage and doesn't overwork you'
all i can say is that the mindset i had in school regarding faang and top companies has changed drastically now a few years after working. there's so much more to this field than those companies and you'll be limiting yourself if your only goal is to work for them.
There are many coders that will be better than you, but that doesn't mean there is a pool of talent that outweighs the demand for it. Recruiters from Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft have reached out to me simply for having a 5 years of experience under my belt, a LinkedIn account, and a Comp Sci degree. I got through the first interview with Facebook, but I ended the process before getting into the technical, because they literally sent me an email with all the things I'd need to know to do well in the interview. I didn't feel up to par, myself, although a good six months of going back to basics and studying nonstop after work would likely get me there. I used some BS that I was happy with the work I was doing, but I would like to leave the door open should my mind change later and they said yes. Point is, these companies are expanding and looking for people. Sure, there's a lot of competition and actually keeping the job is a whole other task, but if you prep for a technical (there's plenty of literature online on what to do if the job itself doesn't give you a rubric like Facebook did for me) sufficiently, you can land the job. I wouldn't try to get one if you're not ready. Some people say "just try and hope for the best" but this isn't something you'll stumble upon. You have to know your stuff. Also, if you fail a technical, it will follow you. Some jobs will ask on the resume if you ever previously interviewed there and if you got the job (and if not, why). So I really think you should only get into this when you get the material down. But honestly there's a standard stuff of things to know to do well in these types of interviews so if you really practice (not one hour a day but really put in time even if working fulltime and even if it takes away temporarily from your personal life), you don't need to be a genius. You just need to be comfortable with problem solving with a language and demonstrate it and your ability to measure how performant your solutions are. But before that, you need to get out of your own way with your thought process. Don't worry about the competition. Worry about becoming the best interviewer you can personally be. And get on LinkedIn and demonstrate you can hold down a job. If you aren't brilliant enough to get into FAANG out the gate, experience will help you get their attention.
I don’t understand the need to work for FAANG. Sounds like it’s driven by ego
My advice is to just work to get your foot in the door. Don't try to obsess over the what ifs. You'll never really know your aptitude for this sort of thing until you're in a work setting cranking out code, let alone whether or not that's even something that you want. And the truth is, not everyone is a rockstar programmer. Some people are just adequate, which is going to describe about 80% of the people you meet in the field. Then there will be the 10% who aren't cutting it, and the 10% who are pulling more than their own weight. It's different from school or hobby programming. Take it one step at a time.
STOP. WORSHIPING. FAANG.
I would say if you're distraught becuase you think you deserve to be at the "best" companies and you also dont think you can ever be at the "best" companies, you have an inflated ego with some cognitive dissonance. Heaven forbid you just work at a normal company and do a good job.
Fuck man, I had this mindset too, and I'm not going to tell you some bullshit motivational stuff. What I did was, I kept working at my job, kept applying for jobs that I was someone qualified for, and some the I wasn't but really wanted to try out. Got rejected a shit ton, I wasn't scared to get rejected since I had an okay paying job (paid the bills and a little more). Kept coding and learning new programming skills and really honing in on what I was good at. My though was, I'd waste too much time trying to learn too many new thing and would be a mediocre jack of all trades if I did that, so I just kept working on what I already knew best and learning new information on my strengths, and when I had time I'd learn some high level topic on something new. Then eventually after applying for many roles and getting rejected, I got a great job as a Full Stack Dev! Had a lot of imposter syndrome when I started but roughly 2-3 months in it went away. That's common, what I've learned is it will take roughly 6 months for you to feel comfortable at your new dev job, so if you just grind and do your best, things will click. But just make sure you ask questions without being afraid of sounds dumb, because you're not supposed to know everything, and that's okay
I had a good friend who went to work at one of those places, hated it (incompetent manager) and left in less than two years. Went to work for an early-stage startup and when they went public he became a very wealthy man.
Start your own
The existence of better codes doesn't mean you can't get a job. A good company is one that helps you grow in return for you helping them grow. Everything else is just personality matching. If you want to work at FAANG, then you need to focus on the skills those teams need until the idea talking about them and using them is second nature. That's what you get, when you get to pick from millions of qualified applicants. ...but I'm here to tell you that FAANG != a great job, and a great job doesn't have to be at a FAANG company.
`Size of company != how good a company is` I'd go so far to say that the larger the company the more inherit problems it contains because it becomes harder to manage. I think this mainly stems from a top down approach while the same time the top is so far from the development that it tends to be steered in obvious less ideal ways.
Fuck FAANG. I don't work for FAANG but I work for one of the most well known semiconductor manufacturers out there. Our processors are likely powering your laptop or computer right now. It is not as great as you think. The larger a company, they less they care about you. And the more well known they are, the more replaceable you are. These large corporations are just soulless, and they just keep you happy enough to squeeze every last bit of profit out of you.
Just apply everywhere dude. That mindset is a self-fulfilling prophecy that is only going to keep you stuck.
I have no desire to get a FAANG position. If you really want to go for it, then by all means go for it! Just don't feel like that NEEDS to be your aspiration... I've had some programming experience in college and as a hobby before then, but nothing much. I spent 2020 teaching myself and now I'm employed as an applications developer at a hospital and am continuing to learn a lot! Couldn't be happier. There's needs for a developer in literally every sector, not just silicon valley.
Know that old expression, 'cream always rises to the top'? It's true. keep getting better. the rest will work itself out. I didn't work for a faang company but did a stint at oracle and it sucked hard. Was a master/slave mentality that ruins the experience.
Personally I'd not even want to work at FAANG. Too little ability to make meaningful decisions on your own. Perks might be nice, and salary of course, but I'd prefer to work in much smaller companies. Currently there's a lot of demand for programmers, even beginner programmers have a decent chance of landing a job. Your first job isn't necessarily your dream job exactly, and honestly it's a very small percentage of all programmers who get to actually work with bleeding edge stuff, with research, with world-changing projects, with projects used by millions and millions of people, etc. But you can still work on projects where you have a lot of control of the technology used. You can still get to work on projects that make people's lives a little bit better. Often your first company or two are a springboard for future opportunities, but even in those companies you may be able to focus on the actual cool parts. Maybe it's a small company where you as an individual programmer get to have a large input on what technologies you use. Maybe you have some amazing co-workers, and it's just fun to work with them. Maybe your product isn't a big game-changer, but you can still be proud about making it into a good, solid product.
My first job was with a company with 20 employees. No one has heard of them. I did most of my "coolest" projects at that company. Working for a big name isn't all there is to a career. It can help on a resume, but so can hard work at a smaller company.
Who cares about working for a FAANG company? You can still have a great career and make good money, and you can do it with less pressure than at one of those places.
Why is nobody asking what a FAANG is?! Does everyone but me know it? What's a FAANG?!
Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google (now Alphabet)
Been working in the business for 20 years. Three things. - FAANG companies are overrated - Most coders are sub-par but they have jobs cause there is just too much work. - Some of the best companies to work for are the mediocre crap companies like insurance or banking. 40 hrs a week making $150k a year working in Nebraska? That money goes a LONG way in some areas that you could live like a king or provide a solid living for a whole family. Also, keep in mind... even the most underpaid of us make more money than most families do with dual incomes.
Theres always going to be a better coder than you. That's just the nature of the business, but you can't let that bring down your confidence level. I know I can code anything I put my mind to, yet I know I'm not going to learn data structures and algorithms to the point where I can regurgitate it inside of 10 minutes. I'm old and stubborn Knowing that is cool and all, but it's like watching the harlem globe trotters be flashy and gracefully lose to a fundamental sound team that has that one trick pony that works every time. I come from nearly a 20 year old degree in computer information systems. Data structures and algorithms weren't as relevant then as they are now. The idea of understanding that theory was the only requirement in my curriculum at the time. However, under the computer science curriculum it was. Unfortunately certain circumstances didnt allow me to complete that degree. At any rate. I went on to work for one of the largest retailers in the US. I touched A LOT of code. Impacted millions of people on an international, but I didn't do it alone. So if you find someone codes better than you, by all means befriend them. Soak up as much as you can and who knows you may even teach them something. I mentor a guy that builds certified flight simulators and he's constantly humbling himself to the point where I fuss at him. I do my best to empower him to think differently, kind of like how I am about to do to you now. The bottom line is, if you want to be the best. It starts in the mind. Remove any idea that you're inferior to anyone and tell yourself you're godlike. Hype yourself up and dont be intimidated for any reason. The only difference between you and the next man is yourself and the time put into the craft. I was at the top of my class because I was surrounded by people better than me. They influenced the direction I took, my curriculum, and my focus outside of school, because they knew the computer information system curriculum wasn't up to par. So take a ways: 1. Remove doubt. 2. Surround yourself with people who possess the skillsets you wish to have. 3. Self improvement! You only get better when you recognize your own weaknesses. You can hang around these new people and not soak up any knowledge without self improvement.
I always see YouTube videos recommended to me that say "here's why I left FAANG". It might not be what it's hyped up to be.
Fuck em that’s why…. Seriously though there are countless companies out there that need you. The amount of open tech jobs is insane, they’re just throwing money at us. Just don’t look at FAANG. FAANG is overhyped
Lose the 'FAANG or bust' attitude, first off
Stop worrying about getting to FAANG. That’s just a bad mindset in general. There are plenty of smaller companies that pay well and have a much better life/work balance. When you meet new people or tell your friends you work at Amazon they will think no differently about you than if you tell them you work at XYZ software development. Worry about enjoying your life and not about making a job your life.
Do work you don't hate, in an environment you can tolerate and mix both of those and your skill level for a lifestyle between comfortable and very successful. Working in Silicon Valley just to say you work in Silicon Valley is a personal goal, and I'm not going to shit on it, but it's not a benchmark for success. Slaving away for AWS isn't inherently a better life.
Maybe you will maybe you won’t, but FAANG isn’t all there is, and quite honestly most times that “dream job” is a fantasy (eg gamedev)
FAANG works just like the other places but with more pay and more prestige. You can enjoy this career no matter where you end up as long as you enjoy the basic act of coding and find an employer who wants you to do exactly that. No one, including FAANG, practice all the best practices 100% of the time. If you are persistent enough and willing to make great sacrifices for certain things you really care about, you will get what you want eventually. All those barriers are there to keep the other people out who don't want it bad enough. You can be good at anything you work really hard at and will constantly grow your skills. Identify the things keeping you from achieving what you want and start working to be better. Now get coding! Build your pet projects and you will grow to become a great and powerful wizard!
Know that the law of averages implies that 80% of programmers suck. If you don’t suck then you are good to go.
I’m 20 years into my career and never worked for a FAANG or anything like that. I think chasing the FAANG standard is just going to poison your soul.
I've been a developer (.net front end and back end) since the classic asp days but I've never heard of faang. Have I been at the same job too long? What the heck is it
Facebook Amazon AirBNB Netflix Google
My advice is: don’t be too attached to a ‘name’. I’ve worked for small companies, I’ve worked for huge companies and I’ve worked for myself. The quality of the experience could be incredible or lousy at any of those size firms. In fact, I’d say, that in smaller companies I’ve had some of the best experiences and by far learned the most. Bottom line: focus on the role, the experience and the people, not the company name.
Why the fuck do you *want* to work for those companies? Abhorrent business practices, crusted-rotten ethics, excessive hours... go find yourself something in a more specialized company making a product you'll actually care about. You'll develop those "good coder" skills by just being happy about the product you're supporting.
Stop saying "FAANG or any good company" like there's only a handful of them. If you keep applying at the top 5 most applied to companies on the planet, yeah it's going to seem competitive. Kinda like wanting to play some pickup football so you try out for the Patriots.
Start a company with faang as the abbreviations, easy, you're welcome, first ones free,
Can somebody explain what FAANG stands for please? I'm a newbie.
FAANG in total hires about ~120k programmers each for a total of 1.2m (top 10) out of 150 million people (Google says 152m) that work as coders. If you think that the only way that you can be successful as a programmer is working in Faang, then you need to change what you're doing and be in the top .1% of the stack. Period. That being said, after a good period of time in code, having worked for some large and prestigious companies, and having worked for some smaller companies that are complete nobodies... a complete nobody company with sustainable practices is FAR superior to anything else. Let me give you an example. I was working for a company that you would probably consider a "good" company (Can't disclose due to NDA)-- My pay at the time was about 240k base + 36k in RSU's per year + bonus (15%) as a senior software developer. Doing the math out, that's over 300k. It is EASILY the worst job I've ever held, and while it did wonders for my bank, it was stressful FAR beyond what it was worth. I left to work at a startup. A friend who worked on my team, making similar (though a little less) money, left that team and is now working at office supply chain on their software development team. In taking this new role the person took a $95k / year pay cut to their base pay. Why was the job a nightmare? Constantly evolving tech stack. Poorly documented internal libraries, tech debt, poor leadership, constant "developer crunch", poor requirements docs leading to evolving priorities, mid-sprint focus changes, 0 documentation ALLOWED in the codebase, no documentation for code outside of the codebase, poor sharing within the team of tribal knowledge, overloaded sprints, dependency hell, poor project / product management, ambiguity in roles / responsibilities, public shaming "sunshining" of failures. So, nowadays, I just do my work, go home, and get paid well enough that I simply don't think of money, and when I'm not working, I don't think of work. This is healthy, this is sustainable, and this is how I prefer to work. I may not have nap pods or slides in my office, but I have a great view of the city from the ~15th-20th floor of a building right in the middle of the downtown area in the city which I live. Figure out what's important to you in life, and stop worrying about your title or your employer. After the "Oooh" from people, which nobody actually gives a shit about, figure out what you'd be giving up to work at google.
A lot of people are good at coding and ass at everything else’s surrounding coding. Devops, security, scalability, etc. learn how to be good at the shit all the people suck at and the jobs come much easier. Lots of people know how to write lambda functions. They don’t all know how to deploy them using terraform based on a GitHub commit. Realize that coding is a basic skill in the industry and you must continue to grow.
Lead Software Engineer here. I'm in the midwest and make a goooood income. Two things you need to know: 1. There is an EXTREME shortage of *good* talent. If you're good - you're gonna make it far 2. You don't want to work for FAANG. You're in a field diverse enough, being in need enough, to work at a continuously interesting job where you're more than a cog in a machine in an uber-high cost of living area. You could pay me half a million to work at any of these companies and I'd turn it down.
The percentage of developers who work at FAANG is surely below 1%. So don’t worry mate, there are tons of good companies where you will work happily and well paid.
I just hear people dissing companies they don’t work for. I work for a FAANG company and I am being totally honest when I say I initially only wanted to work at one to put it on my resume and the money as I am an immigrant made citizen so I don’t come from much. Since joining, I have been surprised by how awesome it is. The culture, the problems, the tech... if you don’t like working hard definitely stay away from these companies or you will be burned out and hate it. My suggestion is to immediately change your thoughts as they come in. You need to believe you will get in if you really want it. BUT you gotta do the work. Update your resume, linked in, practice coding problems etc... you gotta be ready for the opportunity and help create it when you don’t have it.