Rant: I'm one year in at a big tech company, and I hate it

https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1c4bzrc/rant_im_one_year_in_at_a_big_tech_company_and_i/

by manwithnoplan • 2 years ago

21 20 2 years ago

old.reddit.com

Copied from reddit:

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For those of you thinking about taking that big paying job in big tech, let me share my experience so far. Long rant incoming...

I grinded leetcode, did well in an interview, and joined a <TRILLION DOLLAR TECH COMPANY> for the pay, which was >250k. This was a lot more than I ever made before. Great news right? Not really. My bank account is bigger but my anxiety and quality of life are worse.

I came from a job where people are really collaborative and excited to work on things together. People would often show me what they are working on without even asking and show me cool tricks related to their work. I onboarded really fast and was super productive in only a few weeks.

Since I joined <TRILLION DOLLAR TECH COMPANY> as a SWE, I've found things to be the opposite. No one is interested in talking to me at all. No one will ever volunteer information; I have to ask/demand for any and all information from people. The teams and the managers didn't lift a finger to help me learn and onboard to the service/codebase that we were working on, and I was thrust into livesite work to support production bugs and deal with customer complaints early on. The on-call period was brutal, where I'd deal with countless incidents under time pressure with little to no help and bad TSGs.

I noticed the culture difference right away. So when I was new I set up rounds of 1-1s with people on the team (since we are all remote), but they treated it like a chore and a very "political" process. I was often told to provide a list of questions for them ahead of time, and they proceeded to answer my questions exactly as asked and nothing more. I even tried to ask more open ended questions like, "what would the best thing to focus on for a new engineer working on X be?" But these kinds of questions just elicited eye rolls and shallow responses.

No one answers my questions anymore; they often just pass me on to someone else. I've asked multiple times for people to pair up on work together, so I could learn a little bit from them seeing them go through things... but no one will do it.

I talked to my manager, and the manager of our partner team (I work two teams) about this and they both just deflected and said I need to be "more demanding" and to "hound people" until they give me the information I want. They tell me not to shy away from confronting people and to be "relentless."

I don't want to work like that.

My manager has honestly given me very positive feedback, though, and is hinting at an upcoming promotion as a possibility. I've actually accomplished a decent amount despite the circumstances, but I feel like I could have been 10x more productive if the culture was different.

I don't want to have to ask every question; I'd like people to take an interest in me like they used to, and volunteer information every now and then. I'd like someone to care about me and my development, but the culture at <TRILLION DOLLAR TECH COMPANY> seems to be very self centered. People here seem to work in their own bubble where collaborating at all is seen as doing someone else's work.

I honestly hate working here at <TRILLION DOLLAR TECH COMPANY>, but I'm paid really well, so I've stuck with it for a little over a year. Things didn't get better over the year, though. I don't think I belong here anymore, and I question the hiring decision, since it seems to take a very particular type of personality to succeed in this environment. You need to be comfortable treating your coworkers like enemies, basically.

Funnily enough, I have an interview at another <TRILLION DOLLAR TECH COMPANY> (that seems to have an even worse reputation, oh no), set up this week, so I'm hoping that I do well and get another shot at it somewhere else. If it doesn't work out the second time, I'm going to give up on this whole Big Tech thing.

throwaway5959• 2 years ago

I’m 15 years into my career and still make less than $250k per year. Happy to trade places with them.

ro_bit2• 2 years ago

While the sentiments might be popular, I think this is fake. There are only a few trillion dollar companies, and none of them are offering 250k entry level SWE (highest I see is 180, but I haven't checked thorougly)

E: This comment was made under the false assumption that the original poster was entry level. Since it's implied they aren't, it could be very real.

bazil376• 2 years ago

The person on Reddit referenced how things were at their previous job, so probably not entry level

ro_bit2• 2 years ago

Ah, my mistake. If it isn't entry level this is realistic. I'll edit my comment

manwithnoplan3• 2 years ago

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Microsoft,Apple,Facebook,Goo...

Looks like a Google L4, Microsoft 62, Meta E4, and Apple ICT3 all come in at just a little above and below 250k

jitl• 2 years ago

They never said entry level SWE, they said it was more than they’d made before

bhaney2• 2 years ago

Where did "entry level SWE" come from? The poster said they've been with this company for one year, not that this is their first year in the industry.

csa• 2 years ago

none of them are offering 250k entry level SWE

Nowhere in the post or commments does he say he’s entry level — maybe I missed it. It’s also not his first job.

I will also add that there are tech companies that offer total comp of $250k+ for entry level positions. Are your figures just salary or are they total comp?

CoastalCoder• 2 years ago

Let's not just cross-post from Reddit to HN. It's pretty duplicative.

manwithnoplan3• 2 years ago

I think it might be interesting to see how different communities react to the same information.

In this case Hacker News gets to see the Reddit conversation unfold and kind of have a meta conversation about that, too, which I think is fun.

theshrike79• 2 years ago

If cross-posting from Reddit is bad, so should be posting random Tweets.

On Reddit you can actually see the whole thread and conversation, on Twitter/X you can only see the linked one and nothing else.

paxys• 2 years ago

I don't understand why people feel the need to cross-post random Reddit threads over here. If you are interested in discussing it then just do it directly on Reddit? Such content is adding no value here.

silisili• 2 years ago

Agreed. I've just started flagging them, unless it's something super interesting and/or niche.

politelemon• 2 years ago

The same should be said for twitter threads, which are far less accessible, and yet we see lots of those posted here. They are still permitted despite the login wall rule

The reason is it's an interesting topic, not everyone has an account there, and it's good to have a meta or different discussion. So on the contrary, it adds good value.

O1111OOO• 2 years ago

The reason is it's an interesting topic, not everyone has an account there, and it's good to have a meta or different discussion. So on the contrary, it adds good value.

Agree with this reasoning and I'll add a bit more to your point about "different discussion".

There was a reddit story a tad over a month ago: "Someone in IT trolled me for over a decade" : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39678813

It was interesting to read the reactions. On reddit, the story was not questioned at all and the overwhelming response was sympathy & good advice for the user. It just happened to trend that way (sometimes the first few responses dictate the direction).

On HN, the overwhelming response was that the story was fake - with a fair amount of eye-opening analysis.

Sometimes each community brings a unique perspective to a story (sometimes not). Sometimes reddit threads - all by themselves - add significant value.

epilys• 2 years ago

Where do you think you are, right now? This is a *link* aggregator.

Gunax• 2 years ago

Ive been at Meta and Amazon and did not experience anything like this.

But, it can definitely be true. The reality is that <TRILLION DOLLAR COMPANIES> are just so big, they don't really have a doscernable culture. The difference between orgs is enormous.

And the difference in business units (eg between Facebook vs Oculus vs internal tools or AWS vs Twitch vs Amazon operations) is even greater.

One plus of big tech is that means you can change teams and get a very different experience.

bhaney2• 2 years ago

Shame this person isn't happy at Amazon. Hope their interview with Meta goes better!

hindsightbias• 2 years ago

“to support production bugs”

You’re a professional hire, just read the code ir rewrite it. You expected an operation where superstars sit around and maintained their own code?

Rant: I'm one year in at a big tech company, and I hate it

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