How many of you think that some of the big tech companies are destroying engineers and just producing arrogant cocky know it all folks with high TC. Here is what I see: FAANG hires the brightest, that at young age they have the potential to be fantastic engineers. They pay these guys well. Then they put them in IC roles, with minimal supervision, as it is expected that they will be able to handle things well, as they are so bright. These guys without prior experience I the industry can write code quickly, but design is something they are not experienced with. So they design as they design college projects and these don't last. They mindset is, we will fix it when there is a bug or a need. And this causes too much code churn and/or low quality deliverables. But they deliver fast, and their mentors, who are used to this pattern also ignore it and instead reward them with more pay and promotions. At the end they just get cockier and cockier and become bad engineers at high positions with high TC and they generate the next level of engineers.
Inferiority complex?
You’d be surprised how many endless design docs are created and critiqued by numerous experienced individuals - some of whom are leaders in their industry before the first line of code is written. It is annoying red tape that big co workers often complain about
I don't want a doc, I want a good design. What I see(and hence the rant) that a cocky new grad has too much control and responsibility of something they don't understand. And they care less of tests, or testable code design, they assume it will work like their college GitHub io site works, which is to patch it as and when needed. Many don't even bother about breaking interfaces. This just shows the lack of experience in big Enterprise grade productsr that of working in teams
This seems like a highly rare situation. Most new grads are in teams with more experienced engineers who will critique designs and PRs
Maybe youre the one who LARPs all day and gets nothing done. Ever thought about the reverse?
Fair point, but then how did I survive as long as I did, I am sure the firms aren't into charity, or the us department of patents who granted me the several I have, or the several tech conferences like black hat where the y made me a speaker...
Personal branding and patents effect the bottom line LOL ok.
There is value in speed to market. You really don’t think FAANG companies know what they are doing
Fair point. I think the disconnect here is the industry background. Most of the names in FAANG made their mark in server side cloud based arhitecture, which as I noted before is easier to fix if broken. I come from endpoint client side, where once you burn that DVD the code is hard to fix and where you want a design from 1980 to still work today(Dave Cutler). The problem is as these companies expand, they hire newer grads who don't know the difference and end up in teams where breaking things is quite possible
You’re just sounding old.
If what you say holds substance then FAANG would had been out of business 🤷♂️
Again an excellent point. And I think that the risk of bad code and trash design is out trumped by the money they generate. Example a one day black Friday sale will bring billions, who cares if the code behind it is thrown out the next day.
Yup its all about 💰💰💰
For a meta post about TC, this post is missing TC
Time has changed...speed of execution and delivery is more important than accuracy!
Indeed. Also the execution pattern has changed. I used to be in STAR at one time. It is hard to map that experience in a world where things are done so differently.
As a designer I see everyday the impact of speedy engineering, but I also see a lack of long term vision and an incentive to push things into the world that could possibly be of detriment to future opportunities. Younger designers are also to blame in this conversation as they lack systems thinking and product strategy. There are many cases at FB where designers and engineers are in tandem pushing things into the world that make money in the short term. My personal opinion is that as creators of products and tools that millions will use, we need to be more careful, rethink the incentives for how work is evaluated and make sure that we have solid understanding of the impact that our decisions have for the short and long term. Trade offs for short term loss are rarely made for long term gain in my experience in Silicon Valley thus far.
It concerns me that this is even an issue to argue about as I read through the thread...
Ok Boomer