Not learning much at big companies/FAANG
It might just be me but it seems learning opportunity to a point is limited at big companies. Uber isn't that big but most of the heavy lifting has been done. I can't imagine what engineers at even bigger companies are doing. The systems that were cool to build have been built, I want to have my own tech startup someday and I don't feel I'm gaining the necessary skills since my work is specific features under specific subproducts under specific products. Does anyone else feel this way?
FAANG is for šµ Startups are for learning
šš»
Is there no middle ground? Where I can have WLB if I want and good TC but also stellar learning so I can create my own products some day?
The stuff you need to learn to create products isn't technical.
It is though. Building out products, services is all technical.
No, or else PMs, sales, marketing, etc wouldn't exist.
What do you mean you canāt learn. It has been done doesnāt mean itās good enough to use for every use case. I guess just by contributing to internal infra projects alone can give you a lot of learning: read up and learn the design and implementation, find the case where the infra is not good enough to support your use case, then improve it and use it in your project. 1 out of about 20 diffs of mine belong to ^.
I still think it's kind of boxed. With main priority in one area/project there isn't much scope to learn outside of it. For example if I want to learn about the whole flow of an Uber trip and involvement of all systems, it's pretty hard. If I was more involved in building it in the early days I would be a much stronger engineer I feel
Yea, thatās fair. If you want build something from ground up, I think either switch to newer bets (nemo, work, freight etc) or jump ship to start up might meet your needs. I would personally switch team in this case since I havenāt seen many good startup options
Thereās a lot of teams at Amazon that just does DevOps and it is certainly not fun. But if you feel like you arenāt learning much anymore you should change teams/departments or take the leap and do something of your own as a side hustle.
You wonāt learn most of the skills you need to start your own company if youāre an engineer, big company or small. As another commenter said most of the skills you need are non technical.
Uber isn't faang right? Maybe that's why š just kidding
This is a Reliable comment.