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Comment by disgruntledphd2 | Hacker News Reader

The loop variance is very high, so there's a lot of error, but in terms of the overall quality of my co-workers, the FAANG i spent five years at was definitely the best.

I do notice a substantial difference in average quality between them and less successful Bay Area companies, which does suggest that they are doing a reasonably good job at getting pretty good people in the door.

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I think passion comes into play here. You've got to have at least some amount of drive beyond "clock in at 9 and leave at 5 sharp to collect a paycheck" to get into these top tech companies.

Even if at the end of the day, it's still a job, I don't think you can get into these companies unless you dedicate a way-above-average amount of time and effort to do so.

Ignore all of the above if you are a natural leetcode wizard; yes I know there are some people like that.

> You've got to have at least some amount of drive beyond "clock in at 9 and leave at 5 sharp to collect a paycheck" to get into these top tech companies.

I can't say how true this is or not, but I know there are plenty that _want_ to get in exactly so they can clock in & out without doing much

Dunno, I got in relatively early without any leet-coding at all. To be fair though, I work in DS and was in the greater sales org, so there was more of a focus on what I could actually do.

That being said, I think that it was that they (used to) hire people with drive, give them autonomy and a choice of what to work on from the large set of hard problems, and watch the money roll in.

Sounds like you're saying FAANG is above average. Which I'd grant, but that's not really a negation.

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