If you work/worked at a FANG company…

[Anonymous]

are/were there lots of people doing nothing/being unproductive? Several years ago, the media portrayed FANG jobs as ones with long and stressful hours. But, more recently, headlines suggest that FANG hiring practices were mismanaged, causing too many people to be hired. Consequently, a lot of people didn’t do much work, largely attended meetings, etc. It seems that recent hiring was driven by headcount goals, keeping staff away from competitors, etc., but not genuine work. Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Have you seen Silicon Valley? That was from 2016, and they portrayed Rest and Vest. No, FAANG hasn’t been over working people in a LOONG time

[Anonymous]

With most FANG companies, there's usually only 1 or 2 products that actually are profitable (usually super profitable) and then there are a bunch of other products that are basically funded by the 1 or 2 profitable products. In flush times, money is flowing freely and no one has a problem with the unprofitable products. The unprofitable products are those that are supposed to enable to company to grow and perhaps one day become profitable. In lean times, the unprofitable products (and their personnel) are shut down and terminated.

At Google, for example, the main source of profits is search ads. Thus, as part of its layoffs, Google lays off people in niche areas or on experimental products. I suspect if you are a core engineering working on Google Adwords, you're probably pretty safe. However, if you work at Google X or some lab that is trying to "moonshots", you're probably a target for layoffs.

Likewise, at Amazon, for example, the main source of profits is Amazon Web Services. If you're wondering why Amazon as a shopping website/marketplace has started to suck, as it's flooded with fake products and other garbage, it's because Amazon's shopping website/marketplace isn't particularly profitable and so it's neglected. Amazon, as a consumer website, has become the website equivalent of shopping at Walmart or perhaps a Dollar Store. It's not a particularly pleasant experience anymore, but that's what you get when you want low prices on goods.

One other thing that's also happening is the post-pandemic world. During the pandemic, everyone was at home and on their devices. Thus, the FANG companies did very, very well. Accordingly, the FANG companies hired in very large numbers. Now that things are changing and people are back in the office, etc., the pandemic era highs for the FANG companies is also coming to an end.

[Anonymous]

From watching TikToks from FANG employees, it seems there is a fierce competitions inside them to actually be able to work on something.

[Anonymous]

I work for one of the FAANGs. It depends on your dept and what's going on at the time. Ebbs and flows.

In the past couple of years, I've been on projects where we worked crazy hours on a project. Right now, I'm a bit idle but still have things to do because we are at the beginning stages of a project. I anticipate being really busy again by the end of the year, into next year.

I can't tell you what other folks in other depts are working, but I do know that the teams in other depts that work with us directly are also busy.

I'm sure there are many govt employees who also don't do much all day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With most FANG companies, there's usually only 1 or 2 products that actually are profitable (usually super profitable) and then there are a bunch of other products that are basically funded by the 1 or 2 profitable products. In flush times, money is flowing freely and no one has a problem with the unprofitable products. The unprofitable products are those that are supposed to enable to company to grow and perhaps one day become profitable. In lean times, the unprofitable products (and their personnel) are shut down and terminated.

At Google, for example, the main source of profits is search ads. Thus, as part of its layoffs, Google lays off people in niche areas or on experimental products. I suspect if you are a core engineering working on Google Adwords, you're probably pretty safe. However, if you work at Google X or some lab that is trying to "moonshots", you're probably a target for layoffs.

Likewise, at Amazon, for example, the main source of profits is Amazon Web Services. If you're wondering why Amazon as a shopping website/marketplace has started to suck, as it's flooded with fake products and other garbage, it's because Amazon's shopping website/marketplace isn't particularly profitable and so it's neglected. Amazon, as a consumer website, has become the website equivalent of shopping at Walmart or perhaps a Dollar Store. It's not a particularly pleasant experience anymore, but that's what you get when you want low prices on goods.

One other thing that's also happening is the post-pandemic world. During the pandemic, everyone was at home and on their devices. Thus, the FANG companies did very, very well. Accordingly, the FANG companies hired in very large numbers. Now that things are changing and people are back in the office, etc., the pandemic era highs for the FANG companies is also coming to an end.

Amazon is really under the gun, AWS usage dropped. With rising competition from Azure and GCP (well kinda... Google is far behind), and I think the implosion of some startups, I think cloud services may see an overall decline as they were basically funneling VC money to AWS via growing unprofitable startups. Further, established companies may be looking to lower costs, and for stable/slow growth, on-premise hardware can be much cheaper than cloud services, especially in the medium term (replacement cycles may spike expenses temporarily).

https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/03/aws-says-growth-dropped-to-mid-teens-to-start-new-year-as-customer-cost-cutting-continues/

[Anonymous]

I'm in big law and DH is in FAANG. My hours are way worse than his and his perks are better..

[Anonymous]

This is eye opening. So many CS students dream to work for a FSNG company, but it sounds like a cow that’s already been milked.

[Anonymous]

My spouse is at one of these companies, he works long hours but has flexibility. He works from home a few days a week depending on the week. Pay is ok, benefits meh..no perks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is eye opening. So many CS students dream to work for a FSNG company, but it sounds like a cow that’s already been milked.

DD is a CS student, and she said that in the recent years these companies hired a lot of mediocre people, not the top students anymore. Their dream job is now more like Roblox where starting salary is $230k or hedge funds that pay even more.