How Working At FAANG Makes Your Life Harder (From A Staff Engineer at Meta)

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

Name something more frustrating than having your feature stuck in "review hell" at a big company 👇🏽 I'll wait...

[@aldrinseanpereira140]

getting into a big tech company ☠️

[@anubhavgupta8164]

Going through 10 rounds of interviews.

[@lohitakshtrehan6379]

Getting your RFC(Review for Comment) Doc approved is tougher than getting code review

[@iamguyfawkes1474]

getting kicked out by twitter as a top SWE

[@theastuteangler]

Being unable to find clean water to drink, or living in a food desert, or having to hide from bombs, being abused, being an orphan, working a job that can kill you... I think you nerds need a reality check.

[@truthalonetriumphs6572]

Let me add one more thing - changes in the team by people leaving the company or the group. Sometimes there's no one to go to, to understand why a certain complicated design happened. Was it the integration of different products? Was it creeping changes that needed a good cleanup now? Do you modify the code (potentially breaking something) or copy and make changes (parallel implementation that's hard to maintain )? You need the help of people who have been there 5 or 10 years and they are just not available. Keeping experienced people (with familiarity of legacy code) around is one reason large companies are forced to pay higher and higher salaries.

[@starlite5097]

Nice name, what's your truth?

[@truthalonetriumphs6572]

@@starlite5097 Ignore the name 😊 it's for other channels :)

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

great point

[@j3pl]

सत्यमेव जयते

[@SawomirMucha]

That's the exact reason why ADRs (architecture decision records) happen to be invaluable to the project as time passes.

[@ybergik]

After 25+ years in the business, working in companies with anywhere from 20 to 100,000 employees, I've found that the best experience by far is to be had in the smaller companies. In smaller companies (a few hundred employees), you not only get to work on the complete stack, but also be much more involved in deciding what to do and be responsible for testing and supporting it, rather than just be a tiny insignificant cog in the giant machine. Just avoid the smallest companies that don't have enough people to relieve you when you need time off.

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

What are some example companies in that range that you like today?

[@madans19]

At the eod, it all drills down to what one really is looking for in life! Small companies are great in a way, but everything has a con. Sometimes when you work with them, you are made to work whatever your client is expecting to do and with very less offerings/less options! Best part is you get recognized for the work you are doing and the value you are bringing in! Big techs sets your vision high and one can explore with larger opportunities! May be it all depends on what stage one is in life/ what kind of a person one is ? to go towards each of these OR life as it takes you? 👽

[@masterishu6626]

​@@madans19😅

[@keyone415]

I am working for a FAANG, but one company that got acquired by a FAANG few years ago, it's a little bit different, we have a code base, we use Git, and normal CI/CD pipelines, popular tools for managing the infrastructure, microservices architecture, no mono repo, even within big tech you can end up in very different situations :)

[@computeraidedyami]

It's MAANGO not FAANG

[@oleksandrasaskia]

This is spot on! Thanks a lot! My other frustration: often your work is evaluated based on your power point presentation skills…

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

True! Some orgs are better than others, and usually PMs do a lot of that work

[@Napolean45]

Hahahahaha even software engineers? Or products managers?

[@erabhikdasgupta]

I was having a great time learning in a smaller company but the pay is less. That's because ethey have less customers, hence less revenue so they won't give you a great pay. But as a PM, I was not there to just set the big picture, but did a lot of hands on job. I owned the Cloud infra keys, manage and control what releases needed to be sent when, had more control over design and most importantly took decision very fast. Now I work at a FAANG level one and God it's so slow in process. Decision making takes for ever. YES, I do get 5 times more than what I used to do before but I feel that all that I learnt to get into such a company and then literally have no view on anything. Even if you want to do a POC you literally need to raise a ticket wait for days for someone to pick it up so that you can have some libraries installed and then if you feel you need one more you wait again. You will feel so frustrated sometimes that you might end up writing the very library you wanted to install because that's much quicker and even keeps you busy. So if you are born talented, you can join FAANG right early in career, but if you want to grow join a startup, work really hard in that to gain as much exposure and experience, if they give you ESOPs even better because you will also grow richer. Anyhow as long as it's not your own startup, it's all the same be it FAANG or something else. As long as you get paid, you are dojng really well in life.

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

Thanks for sharing your perspective

[@patrickchan2503]

that's why employees at big tech firms drink coffee, play ping pong etc, because they have to wait for decisions?

[@InkaHacker]

1. Startups hire one person to do five jobs. Big companies hire five people to do one job. 2. Don’t fall into the big salary money honey trap. There is a reason why big companies want to do your laundry 3. Big companies are filled with bullshit. Prepare for politics, pecking orders, and mediocrity 4. Big companies fight Innovation, Startups breed it. Public shareholders want you to milk it, startups need you to build it. 5. Keep your burn extremely low and your options open. Overhead kills options. 6. Joining a year-one startup is your best first option. Don’t worry about salary; worry about how much you will learn and how fast you will learn it. 7. Now is the best time ever to build a startup. Everyone is scared, talent is abundant, absurd salary packages are getting pulled, and cash is on the sidelines. 8. Work hard and learn everything you can. Specialize and generalize 9. Equity = Destiny. Power, Freedom, and money are driven by equity 10. Days are long but years are short. You will wake up one day and be 30, 40 and 50. And sadly, one day, you simply won’t wake up. - Jason Calacanis (Founder University)

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

dang it, why are all 4 of those guys on the All In podcast so eloquent??

[@hbpclasses1829]

EOD Salary matters. I don't study for 4 years just to earn 25k-30k per month..

[@srinivaskalyanpotru6478]

100% on point. Could not agree more. Able to communicate well at various levels in a big company is crucial in oder to succeed in your role.

[@TransmentalMe]

Really awesome information and accurate representation of the differences. As someone on the platform team at a big tech company, I can say this applies across roles outside of engineering as well. If you want to work on big tech, whether that is in Customer Experience, Engineering/Platform, UI/UX, etc. You WILL need sharp collaboration and communication skills. You must be able to get out of your comfort zone if you're not used to working with people across multiple teams and many different levels (ICs, Managers, Executives) and talking styles.

[@abdulbadisabir6653]

This is amazing! Nobody else discusses nor articulates at this level of technical depth. Thank you

[@rafatmunshi3572]

After working in Amazon for 6 months, I have experienced each of these, so this is so on point. Thanks Rahul for the confirmation of the challenges. Somehow I won't call them challenges, it's so enjoyable and admirable for me, that it's fun!

[@youngKOkid1]

Monorepo?

[@chidianuforo3670]

I currently work at Meta and see you were an Android engineer. As an Android user, that's pretty cool.

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

very cool! which office are you in?

[@lukezhuo8017]

Problem #5: Being an ex-FAANG intern and encountering FAANG hiring freezes. *Rahul timed his startup exit perfectly

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

still holding onto a bunch of Meta stock 😳

[@mosesmolin7477]

@@RahulPandeyrkp how's that working out for you at this point lol

[@LifeReadiness]

Completely agree to all the points. I am currently working in MAANG and face most these problems on a regular basis. After a point, it is really frustrating TBH.

[@crowel57]

The first problem you mentioned is poor design, not an inherent problem of FAANG companies. I've been at a FAANG company for 10 years now and have never encountered a codebase that would not load onto my local machine. We use GIT and have many smaller projects. We don't have one giant monolithic software product, because that's not how you build good software.

[@josephs.7960]

I am also in a FAANG company that doesn't have this issue (might be the same one) in fact the ease of searching multiple codebases for implementations/approaches is quite the benefit.

[@returncode0000]

All junior devs who follow those twitter tech influencers "go to fullstack in 6 weeks" or something, that's the truth, you will literally freak out when it's your first time joining a larger tech company and your codebase for the first time see. You don't know how challenging that is. The point is that you cannot prepare for this experience. You must have the ability to think in a very structured way and be a very disciplined person. Otherwise you fail and prepare for a nervous breakdown.

[@truthalonetriumphs6572]

Seeing these challenges right now at Meta. Good job on the video!

[@jaldeepupadhyay4646]

Tech Stack. you might be using php at your local web dev but if you move to meta then you have to work with Heck(Php version of meta) but if you move to amazon from meta then you have to work with their defined version of spring. bottom line is small companies are not tech agnostic which might be good for some developer.

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

True, small companies often care a lot about what specific tech you've used.

[@maria-lm8ze]

Curiously, this is not about coding interviews, but it explains why they are the best way to evaluate people - you got to know how to communicate, face challenges and actually solve problems, not just google them

[@8Trails50]

I get what you're saying about adapting your workflow. But as another engineer from Facebook.. they can fix it.. Google did. Google has a way better dev env than Facebook. Amazon also solved it. It doesn't have a monorepo.

[@Thechetankumar]

Dude i need your help 🙏 1. I’m a undergraduate and have some backlogs so i have time now and i studied computer science as one of my subject i have some theoretical knowledge but don’t know how to implement it practically in our labs they only thought us how to copy your code from book to notepad or any IDE 2. I started full stack development course on udemy just because i need some skills before applying for any jobs or internships.after clearing my backlog and getting a job i will learn networking and jump into cybersecurity because I’m more interested in cybersecurity but some people say you need to learn programming and that is the must thing. 3. In the beginning of the course i feel demotivated and cannot able to dedicate proper time even if I’m free all the day 4.and I’m so nervous that my backlogs will affect my career so much

[@hawkeyeyt]

Your backlog won't matter in the long run but your skills. Continue your full stack course and build something. In no time you'll totally forget about the past.

[@Thechetankumar]

@@hawkeyeyt thanks a lot bro

[@SATYAMSINGH-ly8kb]

Projects bro Only projects will help

[@joshurlay]

Shelve the udemy, try theOdinProject. It changed my life.

[@TheLucqui]

Gorgeous man!

[@YashrajKakkad]

Hello Rahul, any incentives on the Taro Membership during the coming Black Friday?

[@ianmyers5784]

you didn't mention technical debt, must be way different from small to large companies.

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

there's a ton of tech debt at large companies (FAANG). this is certainly a non-exhaustive list :)

[@ayushmehre]

Insightful❤

[@gopalakrishnan9610]

Why the hell would large companies use MonoRepo? I work at Amazon, and Amazon doesn't used Mono repos. Im curious

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

yea, Amazon famously embraced microservices

[@d04bl3]

Easier code sharing between projects. These days there are tools like NX or turborepo that map out a dependency graph to only build certain projects when they’re affected or you can also use that to share common libraries without publishing to a repo like npm.

[@Italya3343]

One of the most amazing and honest videos I have even seen about big tech! 👏👏🔥🔥 Many thanks for sharing with us the authentic side of the big tech 👍🔥 May Allah bless you 🙏 I interacted with Alll ads to support your amazing video!

[@pranshuchittora5444]

Now life at Big Tech is not good, because there's no job. Great content, can you please make a video on what can be the possible next steps for folks who are impacted by the recent layoofs.

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

I just did!!

[@pranshuchittora5444]

Thanks a lot Rahul for the video, just watched it and it is really helpful. Once again thanks a lot for your invaluable contribution to the tech community. 🙌

[@st2rseeker]

This is a really insightful video, thank you.

[@AlexSuperTramp-]

Just a heads up, your videos are quite a bit quiet than the rest of youtube

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

😓 sorry about that

[@thyagarajesh184]

I would like you to share insights about the tech at Twitter. What will be the impact of cutting the engineering staff (by half).

[@AlexiosLair]

Not much? They gonna get hired elsewhere?

[@dula7882]

Not much especially if the previous tech engineers did not do much for new functionalities and features for at least 5 years

[@stevezes]

problem 1 isn't true at google

[@Mankind5490]

Been a software engineer at my company for 5+ years. Dealt with 10,000+ lines of code but it never occurred to me how your local system would fail trying to load 10 million+ lines of code.

[@krishnakumarr2121]

Really good Information. Widened my perspective

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

Glad to hear it

[@kbsunil7464]

how do you test your features you developed. will there be any replica test environments .I used to work where i have developer , test ,stage ,at last production environment

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

Most features will be released progressively behind an experiment so you know it's safe. On mobile, you also have the alpha/beta versions of the app for early signal. Facebook doesn't really use a test/staging/prod DB.

[@rahuljindal121]

Thanks for the great information. I also work as Android developer. Can you please help me understand if we get interviewed for Android specific role will it be different from a general SDE interview in MAANG

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

There will be a lot of overlap with the general SWE interview, but in my experience you should expect 1 or 2 Android-specific rounds (out of 5-6 rounds total).

[@thevishvammoliya]

Aren't these challenges good for development of oneself?

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

Some challenges are worth working through, others are best avoided

[@mahir7530]

What's a position that doesn't require coding too much?

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

Many. UXR, data science, management, some types of engineers

[@divyanshugangwar7388]

This video is about finding problems for the sake of finding problems

[@apoorvakumar7102]

Hey, would you recommend taking up an offer with Amazon at their Dublin campus?

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

depends on what other options you have

[@crowel57]

Amazon is the only big tech company left that is still hiring. The rest are in hiring freezes or laying off. It's ultimately up to you, but I would recommend taking it, unless you have a better offer somewhere else.

[@apoorvakumar7102]

@@crowel57 I guess even amazon has started a hiring freeze in its corporate workforce

[@crowel57]

@@apoorvakumar7102 Amazon is not in a hiring freeze like most other companies are. They have just stopped hiring in certain orgs that have already met their hiring goals for the year. There is no company wide freeze, but they also don't just hire infinitely. They have budgets set at the beginning of each year that allow them to hire a certain number. Once they meet that number, they have to wait until the new budgets come out.

[@apoorvakumar7102]

@@crowel57 Oh ok. Thanks for the insight buddy. I was feeling kinda sad since because I just got rejected by Amazon a few days ago despite having a good interview.

[@JohnSmith-kf1lq]

Most teams in Microsoft don't use a mono repo

[@bjorn1378]

Hmm...It's too much for me. I think business domain would be better for me now.

[@elliotjones3098]

thank God I don't work in IT anymore......I can just imagine having to deal with all of that nonsense, no thanks

[@jamiecole1315]

The only reason Netflix is still counted in FAANG and not just streaming is so the acronym stays PC

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

yea, doesn't quite have the same charm if you remove the N :P

[@omardavila8165]

All stories about "Day in a life of a Software Engineer" wake up at 9 am, working only 5 hours per day spending most of the time on secondary things instead of coding. Is it true? :P

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

hmm maybe I should make a day in the life video...

[@seangreen9590]

The sound is very low

[@reardelt]

Don't just copy the word "FAANG" from social media. The FAANG acronym is outdated. FAANG misses out 3 big tech companies like Microsoft and Tesla and twitter. A more appropriate term is GANTTFAM which includes Microsoft and tesla and twitter.

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

But how many times do people search for GANTTFAM? 😅

[@avneeshkhanna]

The title of this video is misleading. The problems you described are simply how FAANG operates. These challenges are part-and-parcel of running a big tech company. The title of the video gives an indication that somehow, these are the disadvantages of working in a FAANG company. They are not. They are the challenges which you are hired to work on.

[@parlor3115]

Probably just pissed cuz he got laid off by Zuck

[@rougeneuron]

These are common software engineering problems which also happen at big tech as well. Just calling them big tech problems is nice click bait.

[@David-vq6qg]

It's not as scary as ur title made it to be. Honestly the only hard thing is just being able to adjust to a different/ tech company's coding system. Communication-wise what they do at Meta makes sense.

[@yabannamba7678]

Tech youtubers would have nothing to say if it wasn't for those FANG semi-clickbait semi-humblebrag videos...

[@gregtaylor9806]

These ones aren’t that bad. It’s the ‘day in the life of a..’ and ‘how I spend my $X salara y as a..’ that are just sooooo played out

[@yabannamba7678]

@@gregtaylor9806 true those are worse.

[@alexandrep4913]

Twitter Employees: "Yall have more than 3gb of code?" I guess whoever is left there.

[@_Aarim]

You can't call in "FAANG" especially if you're in "Meta". It's MANGA now :P

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

i'll do whatever has more search traffic

[@_Aarim]

@@RahulPandeyrkp touché lol

[@drunkenpigtnt1359]

I am not a great programmer and I think it's god's plan

[@fidaulfat589]

Where is no Twitter

[@vinodsingh-dd1jj]

Sir jee I am doing mechanical engg Please confirm about my future I am from nit raipur First year Thoda depression ho raha hai Sara package sirf it mein he hai

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

Even if you do mechanical engineering, you can still end up as a software engineer. You can self learn (build projects), or do a Masters in Comp Sci

[@vinodsingh-dd1jj]

@@RahulPandeyrkp yes sir I will try But tech company placement nhi deti hai

[@aruns8697]

11 days ago! Dude are you still a staff engineer at Meta? 😉

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

nope

[@aryanraj9891]

​@@RahulPandeyrkp Why so? U left?

[@PrasanjeetMohapatra]

If not for layoffs then it could have been a different video all together.

[@ILykToDoDuhDrifting]

>learning budget ... Amazon... LOLLO LAAHAHA AHAHAH

[@beverlyHillsAgent]

another challenge is that you become a gear of a machine in a big tech company. Eventually you will less of a generalist. If you don't keep you skills updated at your free time, your skills will be quite outdated.

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

That might be try to some extent, but I generally someone in Big Tech to quickly pick up other technology. I talk about it here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nZ6vXqyDZteSsNE

[@genericdeveloper3966]

More reasons why I'm glad to work at startups. I get paid less, sure, but I'm happy with my work life with minimal complexity.

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

but overall life can still be good at a big tech co

[@pranshul..]

That sounds fun and interesting to me though 🤩 I haven't even worked with a mid-sized company yet 😂

[@silhouettefalcon1659]

Dude, the audio is low. I've max out my volume and the words you're dropping are still quite hard to understand.

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

sorry about that, fixed going forward

[@musingsofrock]

You look a bit like me! lol I showed this video to my relatives and they agreed! lol.

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

interesting :) so.... do you think you're good looking?

[@musingsofrock]

@@RahulPandeyrkp More importantly.. who is your father? lol jk..

[@KyleLuce]

Mono repos seem to be an artifact of legacy process and even monolith architectures. Exception: I have seen this in huge Android and web UI repos. Amazon doesn't do this, or other big tech/fintech I've worked for. I hate monolith repos lol. Break that junk up guys. It's horrible practice, in my opinion.

[@kratos4435]

Bro I know there are some problems everywhere, but that's your perspective. I always wish to be in one of those companies, i dropped out of college and made a huge mistake. Now I'm stuck with my strict and abusive parents, no job, no life. I wish I could get a decent job that can secure my living so I can escape my house and live independently and freely. These problems that you mentioned in big companies are nothing, atleast to me. There are far bigger problems out there, all my previous jobs in small companies are the stories of bullying and exploitation. I'm practicing python and JavaScript hoping something to happen because something is better than nothing. But I'm clueless what to do. I'm almost 30. Any suggestions would be helpful, and BTW I'm in India.

[@fullyautomaticbottrading983]

you have strict and abusive parents that too in India...stop blaming your parents who are bread owners and start accepting your failure...ye USA ka culture tu india mai practice kar Raha hai...like dropping out from college and calling your parents abusive....tu nikkamma hai nakara hai...your parents are nowhere to blame for your failures......bro go to the USA...you will find much more peace there.

[@kratos4435]

@@fullyautomaticbottrading983 how is dropping out of college certain culture? Idiot. My parents were abusive since I was born, my father was cursing everyday because he had to loan for my college along with housing loan which he already was paying, so he had burden because college was expensive. So i decided to drop out because I couldn't listen to him everyday. His salary was just 22k, don't be stupid and assume politics. If you are too leaned towards Indian culture, fine. But I'm not leaned towards USA culture or anything. In 2022, expressing a problem is culture? what next? Caste?

[@shiningdragon8737]

My suggestion, is to get a job and keep practicing code. Save your money and get the hell out of your parents house. Oh and also keep how money you make and have to yourself, they might try to sabotage you.

[@janesmy6267]

I miss all the custom Python functions that made life easier lol.

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

there's a ton of great internal stuff within big companies as well as bad stuff!

[@GizmoMaltese]

I don't understand why you're working on something that you have to convince people is worth doing? Don't they approve the work before you start?

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

It's generally not clear what exactly needs to be built in order to achieve the desired outcome for the org. So here's a concrete example: there are many experiments that happen simultaneously -- some increase certain metrics, but decrease others. If you want to ship an experiment, it's your job to convince the team that you understand the changes, and it's a net benefit to the user.

[@GizmoMaltese]

@@RahulPandeyrkp Wow, that's an extremely inefficient use of resources. Most companies make that decision at design time. I guess when you have a lot of money you can afford to run these experiments instead of making a decision at design time.

[@GizmoMaltese]

@@RahulPandeyrkp I'm curious. Facebook looks like a website. I know they have Messenger and other apps but I have trouble imagining why they need so many devs. What did you actually work on?

[@workwithwegs4541]

Why am I even watching this, it's impossible for me to get into one HAHAHAH

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

I think you could do it

[@necbranduc]

*former Staff Engineer?

[@bdjeosjfjdskskkdjdnfbdj]

zbgs is amazing tho

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

yes!! zbgs is pretty amazing, they have to constantly keep the index updated given the velocity of code being checked in

[@DuyTran-ss4lu]

Great

[@a5adullah]

Are you still employed?

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

I'm working on joinTaro.com

[@generalshepherd457]

Seems like a nightmare. I suspect there are a lot of suicides at these companies that gets covered up and never hear about.

[@KennTollens]

Why don't you create an AI where you don't have to do any of that. Just talk to the AI and tell it what you want, and the AI does all the coding and manages all the hubbub. Computers don't have a mind and direction, but we do, and they can do all the monkey work. Programmers keep building a wheel, build the machine that builds the wheel.

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

but there's a lot of debate + confusion on the specs of the wheel 😅

[@firstperspective9131]

Thaana mein baithe on duty bajawe hoyee Pandeyy ji seeetii

[@krishnodas6678]

I want these challenges in my life 😀😀

[@svvs83]

They why the hell you're working, just resign atleast some desirable candidate will get the job.

[@vdubz67]

Lol what is this guy talking about. Big tech companies use monoliths? They should be set up as microservices

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

the gap between "it is" and "it should"

[@friendsandfamily100]

Unemployed. Unsatisfied. Employed. Want more. Work at faang, still complaining. When is my generation going to start being grateful and work their butts of like we should for our respective companies? Where ever we're placed.

[@Sarwaan001]

Every time I had to deal with bazel I wanted to die

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

never worked with Bazel but I've heard things 😅

[@computeraidedyami]

MANG....O 🥭

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

didn't realize that emoji exists 🥭🥭

[@bigpoppa6658]

Soft generation

[@chaitanyatuckley4666]

Awww but Indians run these companies na.

[@fernandasori5609]

Just go somewhere else to work. $$$$

[@HarshitRalhan]

Why do you be so emotionally unexpressive