In software engineering, there is no way to objectively determine how much work someone can get done in a week. Performance is just one large stack rank where the top X% get good reviews, the bottom Y% get bad reviews, and the middle get an average rating. The only difference is that companies like Amazon will pip the bottom while Google will just make the bottom uncomfortable until they voluntarily leave. Wouldn’t that mean non-top tier companies have much better wlb since the caliber of the workers is lower so you can do less work to blend in and get by? I was thinking that the amount of work per week you’re expected to get done at top tier companies is signficantly higher than normal companies but people that work there report normal wlb simply because they’re more likely to be the upper end performers in normal companies. I do believe you learn a lot from being at FANG but thats a different conversation. Clarification: By normal companies I’m referring to companies you haven’t heard of in cities that aren’t tech hubs. I’d expect a company like Salesforce in Seattle to have similar talent levels as Amazon due to their similarity in pay and location.
All jobs implicitly stack rank because forming hierarchies is part of human nature. How those at the bottom of the hierarchy gets treated wildly differs between companies though.
For example, lets say employees from “mom and pop shop LLC” in New Orleans do 5 units of work per week. Google engineers in Mountain view do 10 units of work per week. If you do 7 units of work at Google, they wont pip you but theyll tell you that you need to step it up. However you will get that same conversation with your manager at”mom and pop LLC” when you only do 3 units of work per week.
So you almost always have to work twice as hard at Google. But since google engineers can do more on average, they still cite that they work 40 hours a week. This doesnt mean you wont have to work double at google, it just means google has higher talent.
Probably OP means 1. Manager saying you need to step up 2. Judgemental look or silence when you don’t meet 10/10 goals 3. Slowly excluding you
I don't agree that everyone treats the bottom the same and are just different in how open they are about it. The bottom gets treated very differently. I agree in that, everywhere has a pecking order and probably explicit quotas and budgets, that only the managers are supposed to know about. But it's still zero sum.
These are 2 different worlds. Large corp is structured and managers will push you hard to attain the objectives, they will push but will give you the option to be “better”. Small companies in contrast are like circuses (not in a negative) - there are different people, you do not blend, and nobody will hold your hand. In a small company it is gonna be a psychological pressure which will force you out, not a PIP. There are also a bunch of in between examples. I’m talking about extremes. Working in a tiny company myself.
Actually I have experienced first hand that when the caliber of your coworkers is lower you have to do more work, not less. One reason is poor communication, bad code resulting in lot of wasted effort.
Exactly. Outside of FAANG, everyone just works harder, not smarter. The best thing about a place like Google is automation and the good proccess to make life easier.
Everyone stack ranks, but the best places have a culture of people uplifting people to work better. Stack rank orgs spend their time coming up with schemes to make sure it's not you clearing your desk in November, by backstabbing.
My experience working in low tier companies in the past is that the lack of technical competition is made up for with politics. Performance reviews can be more subjective and teams are cliquish. If that's something you're good at navigating it might be fine.
Agree