Does anyone else feel really put off on the idea of working at a big tech corporation by articles like this? If I wanted to play the career game, I would have studyied something more business related and got a graduate job at somewhere like KPMG.
Startups were a mess of failed products, misguided work, and managers who showed no interest in managing, let alone investing in the growth of their reports. Good management is awesome.
I often see criticisms of bigtech as overpaying... or perhaps it is everyone else who is underpaying? Quit making the argument you should be underpaid!
Not to mention that at the big companies (FAANG) you get to work with some really awesome smart people. And work on hard problems that matter with products people actually use.
In the best case small startups are awesome. But there are many mediocre cases out there. Crazy crazy stuff. Every small startup I’ve been part of has had huge drama. Including extortion, sociopaths, bad senior hires, funding gone weird, and sheer embezzlement/misspending.
I've been contracting at a startup for a year, and seen all this happen during my tenure. We've managed to strip most of the deadwood now, but I'm unsure whether it was done in time. It'll be a pity if the company folds, because they have some quite cool tech.
Everytime I see something like this, I'm glad I chose the life of a contractor.
"and how I present it" sounds suspiciously like 'how much my manager likes me' (or whoever you present it to). Seems more like "same thing, different name" to me than a real difference here.
The people who made this decision we're specifically selected to not be familiar with you or your work. So it couldn't have anything to do with how anyone liked you.
But even beyond that, larger companies more commonly have codified ladders and clear rubrics or criteria for advancement and performance. This means that a manager must justify their rating against a set of objective criteria. Managerial bias can still creep in, but only on borderline cases. (And elsewhere in the workplace, but that's mostly unavoidable)
Including signing a FB new grad can make up to ~$225k in their first year. There aren’t many industries where this is possible with a bachelors or less.
I'm very sad I'll never get that...
I'd say that it's not as bad as it sounds, as dramatic stories tend to find their way up the HN ranking.
Working for big corp you have to pay the "corporate tax", which is this sort of inhuman set of corporate rules. As a free human being it feels really weird and offputting. What's really weird is the people who have been here for their entire careers and don't see that it's weird. Somebody described it like growing up in a dysfunctional family; it feels normal to you.
Anyhow, you can also keep your humanity and look at the rules as a minor annoyance that doesn't have to get you down. You can also think about it as part of getting a much larger paycheck. Some of my co-workers are ready to throw that away to work on their passion, but I quite like it.