Alex Chiou & Rahul Pandey

It seems like for 90%+ of engineers, their ultimate career goal is to break into FAANG, otherwise known as Big Tech. While this is a perfectly fine aspiration to have, many of these engineers don't actually know what life at FAANG is like at all, especially those earlier-in-career with weaker networks. FAANG looks great on the surface with its many genuinely helpful career perks, but it's full of darker downsides underneath the surface as well.

In a nutshell, that's what this in-depth course is meant to help you with - We're going to demystify and lift up the veil around FAANG, so you can get a full, objective look at what it's actually like being an engineer at these tech behemoths. After going through this course, you will:

- 🧠 Have a framework to plot a course toward your career success
- ✅ Understand the full suite of career benefits FAANG provides you as an engineer
- ❌ Get a real look at the many cons of working at FAANG
- 🔍 See common scenarios where it does or doesn’t make sense to work at FAANG
- 🎯 Know the true pure ultimate goal every engineer should have with their career (hint: it’s not to work at FAANG)

[Taro Classic] FAANG Career Guide: What Big Tech Is Like For Engineers

Overview

Pros of Working at FAANG

Cons of Working at FAANG

Wrapping Up

High Expectations

The Path To Career Success

What Exactly Is Big Tech?

Big Tech Is Not A Monolith

Competitive Pay

Talent Density

Future Job Prospects

Stability

You'll Learn Proper Engineering Skills

Well Roundedness

Peer Pressure

Poor Work-Life Balance

Just A Cog In The Machine

Politics

Lack of Control

Where's The Scope?

Swingy Compensation

Ethical Concerns

It Depends

The Case FOR Big Tech

The Case AGAINST Big Tech

When To Join Big Tech

Your Happiness Comes First

Expectations at Big Tech companies are extremely high and that pressure really shapes the engineer experience. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Big Tech roles pay top-of-market compensation, and in return companies expect top-tier productivity, output, and code quality
- Many engineers coming from non–Big Tech backgrounds experience culture shock due to stricter standards, faster pace, and more rigorous release processes
- Performance reviews are a major source of stress, heavily peer-comparative, and central to promotions and job security
- Past eras of “rest and vest” are largely gone; in today’s leaner, more competitive tech environment, expectations - especially for newer and more junior engineers - are higher than ever

Before diving into the pros and cons of Big Tech, we introduce two foundational career frameworks that offer different approaches to growth. These models help structure decision-making as one considers roles at large tech companies.

- **Explore vs. Exploit (David Epstein’s “Range”)**: In the early career stages, it’s valuable to gather a wide range of experiences—trying different roles or disciplines—to discover personal strengths and interests. This sampling period can lead to deeper, more informed commitments later.
- **Cultivate Passion through Skill (Cal Newport’s “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”)**: Rather than waiting to find a passion, pick a field and become excellent at it. Passion often emerges through mastery and impact in a chosen domain.
- Both frameworks offer valid paths and should be selected based on personal goals and life stage. The talk later connects these frameworks to the realities of working in Big Tech.

While many people associate "Big Tech" with the largest household names in the industry, the definition can, and should, be broader. This lesson provides a useful lens for identifying companies that operate like Big Tech, even if they’re not part of the traditional FAANG group.

- **Traditional Big Tech**: Commonly refers to the largest companies by market cap - *Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, and Meta*. Sometimes Netflix is included (as in “FAANG”), but it's structurally different, e.g. Netflix historically had no engineering levels and treated everyone as senior engineers.
- **Critique of the FAANG Acronym**: Netflix is singled out as not entirely representative of "Big Tech" norms, being smaller in scale and structurally more unique than the others.
- **Broader Definition**: Companies with *$50B+ market cap* and *2,500+ engineers*, along with similar performance expectations, leveling systems, and engineering culture as the Big Five, should also be considered Big Tech. This includes companies like *Uber, Airbnb, and Stripe*.
- **Why This Matters**: Focusing only on the top 5–6 companies can be limiting. Many other companies now offer equivalent opportunities in terms of compensation, growth potential, and engineering culture, especially as they reach scale.

This broader perspective is helpful when evaluating job options and team culture - not all Big Tech companies are the usual suspects.

Although Big Tech is often discussed as if it's a uniform experience, that assumption doesn't hold up under scrutiny. The lesson clarifies that these companies, and even teams within them, can differ dramatically in culture, structure, and day-to-day work.

- **Big Tech is not a monolith**: Companies like Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, and Microsoft may appear similar, but each has distinct norms and quirks. For example, Apple and Amazon differ significantly in operating style.
- **Team-level variation is substantial**: Within any large company - especially one with thousands of engineering teams—there’s huge internal variability. At Google, for instance, it’s unrealistic to expect all teams to operate the same way.
- **Meta as a case study in divergence**: Meta operates almost like four separate companies due to its major acquisitions (Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus), each with its own leadership structure and internal culture.
- **Caveat for the audience**: The content that follows reflects common experiences shared by 70–80% of Big Tech engineers, but there will be outliers. Some parts may resonate; others may not - and that’s normal.

Big Tech companies are widely known for offering extremely competitive compensation packages, which is often one of the primary reasons engineers aim to work at these firms. This segment outlines both personal anecdotes and structural strategies that explain why compensation in Big Tech is so high.

- **Top-Tier Compensation Strategy**: Meta’s compensation goal, for example, is to pay in the 90th percentile—more than 90% of other tech companies—making total compensation significantly higher for engineers who make the transition into Big Tech.
- **Drastic Pay Increases**: It's common for engineers switching from smaller or non-FAANG companies to experience dramatic increases in pay - often as much as 50–100%.
- **High Cost of Living Justification**: These lucrative salaries help offset the cost of living in expensive tech hubs like Silicon Valley, New York City, and Seattle, where basic housing or property ownership can be out of reach without this level of income.
- **Prestige + Pay Combo**: Many engineers underestimate the financial upside of Big Tech and initially assume a 20–30% increase is generous. In reality, the combination of prestige and substantial pay is a powerful draw.

Working at a Big Tech company means joining an environment that systematically attracts top-tier talent due to its high compensation and prestige. This creates a unique ecosystem where growth, learning, and problem-solving are significantly accelerated.

- **Talent Follows Compensation**: Competitive pay naturally draws in highly skilled engineers. While exceptions exist, the vast majority of engineers in Big Tech are above-average in both technical skills and motivation.
- **Noticeable Culture Shift**: Engineers often report that, compared to previous jobs, colleagues in Big Tech care more about code quality, engineering rigor, and continuous learning.
- **High Learning Potential**: Being surrounded by experienced and skilled engineers ensures a constant opportunity to learn. Teams often include individuals who are more experienced, creating a strong environment for mentorship and knowledge transfer.
- **Collective Wisdom and Problem Solving**: The scale and maturity of these organizations mean that most technical challenges have been encountered, and solved, before. Success often comes from leveraging internal networks to find engineers who’ve already navigated similar problems.
- **Standing on Shoulders of Giants**: Engineers thrive by observing and applying best practices from tech leads and staff engineers, accelerating their own effectiveness and impact through this ecosystem of shared expertise.

Having a Big Tech name on your resume, whether Meta, Google, Uber, or others, often leads to significantly improved job-seeking outcomes. This reputation, deserved or not, dramatically influences how recruiters and hiring managers perceive candidates.

- **Stronger Resume Signal**: A stint at a Big Tech company increases perceived credibility and opens doors. Even a one- to two-year tenure can 100x the likelihood of landing interviews at other desirable companies.
- **Perception of Operational Excellence**: Recruiters and startup founders often assume that employees from companies like Amazon or Meta carry with them the systems, processes, and best practices that helped those firms succeed.
- **Proximity to Core Value Drives Perception**: Engineers who worked on flagship products or core systems (e.g., TikTok’s recommendation engine) are perceived as especially valuable, as if they embody the company’s strategic advantage.
- **Brand Halo Effect**: Just being associated with a known entity creates a trust shortcut—recruiters assume a baseline of competence and quality due to the rigorous hiring practices and peer environment of Big Tech.
- **Standardized Hiring Signal**: The structured interview process (e.g., Leetcode-style DSA questions) at these companies helps ensure a consistent bar, reinforcing the belief that Big Tech engineers are generally stronger than a randomly selected candidate.

Even amid recent waves of layoffs, Big Tech companies continue to offer more job stability than most others in the tech industry. This stability is driven by several structural advantages, not just current economic conditions.

- **Layoffs in Big Tech are more reactive, less  routine**: Unlike smaller companies or traditional enterprises that cut staff regularly every 1–2 years, Big Tech companies like Google and Facebook went over a decade without mass layoffs. Their recent cuts were responses to extreme macroeconomic shifts, not standard operating procedure.
- **Higher baseline of job security**: Statistically, it’s harder to lose a job at a Big Tech company, especially when compared to \~80–90% of other tech firms. That said, consistent performance is expected to maintain that security.
- **Stability comes from product-market fit**: These companies have already achieved PMF with multiple products—Google, Meta, Airbnb, etc.—which ensures reliable revenue and customer demand. This reduces existential risk compared to early-stage startups.
- **Strong financials provide a cushion**: Many Big Tech firms operate some of the most profitable business models in history, particularly in digital ads and cloud infrastructure. Their massive cash reserves and consistent profit margins further insulate them from financial instability.
- **Comparison with startups is stark**: Companies still seeking product-market fit or surviving on runway from funding rounds face constant pressure to cut costs, making layoffs more common and less predictable.

Working at Big Tech companies offers a unique opportunity to develop strong engineering foundations by being immersed in mature processes, robust tools, and a culture of high standards.

- **Access to top-tier engineers and tooling**: Employees are surrounded by highly skilled engineers and comprehensive internal tools that streamline development. Many of these tools address needs engineers didn’t even know they had until using them.
- **High-quality code review culture**: Rigorous code reviews from experienced peers serve as a fast-track for learning. Early feedback can be intense but leads to rapid growth in code quality, scalability awareness, and best practices.
- **Exposure to mature engineering systems**: Engineers learn the full lifecycle of software deployment with components like dogfooding, alpha/beta testing, stage rollouts, A/B testing, monitoring, and alerting, many of which are often missing or underdeveloped in smaller companies.
- **Longevity drives technical evolution**: Companies like Meta and Google have evolved with the industry, migrating through major tech stack changes over decades. This adaptability teaches engineers how to future-proof their systems and processes.
- **Cultural emphasis on continuous learning**: The engineering culture encourages innovation, resilience, and cross-pollination of ideas, making it ideal for those looking to grow as adaptable and forward-thinking software engineers.

Working in Big Tech expands far beyond engineering; it shapes individuals into well-rounded professionals by pushing them to develop skills in communication, leadership, and cross-functional collaboration.

- **Development of cross-functional skills**: Navigating product launches or technical changes in a large organization requires coordination across many stakeholders, honing project management, communication, relationship-building, and system design abilities.
- **Environment fosters personal growth**: Operating within a large, complex structure forces individuals to adapt, influence, and lead through collaboration—skills less emphasized in smaller, more agile companies.
- **Preparation for an AI-driven future**: As coding becomes more automated, the remaining 80% of a top engineer’s job like communication, strategy, and leadership becomes even more valuable. This environment equips engineers for longevity in their careers.
- **Transferable experience for career switchers**: Even those new to tech can succeed by leveraging skills from prior careers (e.g., hospitality, education, operations). Communication and stakeholder management experience, in particular, translate well.
- **Resilience through versatility**: Focusing on foundational skills that transcend tech stacks or tools creates career durability, avoiding dependency on niche or outdated technologies.

Working in Big Tech often means operating in a highly competitive environment filled with extremely talented peers. This creates both motivation and significant pressure, especially due to how performance systems are designed.

- Big Tech companies commonly use forms of stack ranking, where engineers are compared against peers and the bottom 5–15% may face probation (PIP) or termination each review cycle.
- Being surrounded by exceptionally strong coworkers can lead to intense pressure, imposter syndrome, and constant anxiety about staying out of the bottom cohort.
- High performers are often rewarded well, but lower performers may struggle, making the environment feel “dog-eat-dog.”
- Talent density can create problems with limited scope and many strong engineers competing for meaningful work, which can impact evaluations and career growth.
- Some teams have abundant scope and are great for growth, while others (like highly mature products) may have minimal impactful work, worsening peer pressure.

Working in Big Tech offers prestige and high pay, but it often comes at the cost of personal time and mental well-being. The demanding environment, peer pressure, and ambiguous policies can lead to overwork and burnout.

- **Competitive Culture Fuels Overwork**: The intense stack ranking and peer comparison systems push employees to work beyond normal hours to maintain high performance ratings and avoid being ranked at the bottom.
- **On-Call Stress and Burnout**: At scale, systems often encounter issues, and engineers may feel pressured to respond even during vacations, especially if they are domain experts.
- **Peer Pressure to Match Hours**: Engineers often feel compelled to match their teammates’ late-night work habits, contributing to a cycle of poor boundaries and collective burnout.
- **Unlimited PTO Backfires**: Policies like “unlimited vacation” often discourage time off, especially when company leadership sends contradictory messages about taking breaks.
- **Regional Differences Exist**: The culture of overwork is more intense in Silicon Valley compared to other parts of the world, such as Europe, where vacations are taken more seriously and work-life boundaries are better respected.

Although Big Tech offers compensation and prestige, the sheer scale of these organizations can lead engineers to feel like small cogs in an enormous machine. The work often becomes highly specialized and incremental, making it harder to find personal fulfillment or a sense of ownership.

- **Incremental Work Dominates**: Many engineers are tasked with refining already hyper-optimized features, such as tweaking a single call-to-action button on an ad format. This kind of work can feel repetitive and lacking in creative fulfillment.
- **Limited Ownership**: As teams grow larger, individual engineers may end up owning only a sliver of a product component—sometimes just one platform’s implementation of a single UI element.
- **Slower Innovation in Mature Products**: Legacy systems and products that have been around for over a decade (like Gmail) may offer fewer opportunities for impactful changes, making it harder to grow scope or gain recognition.
- **High Competition for Scope**: Even when surrounded by brilliant engineers, opportunities for meaningful ownership can be scarce. This leads to competition over small improvements and sometimes a struggle to stand out.
- **Pockets of Growth Still Exist**: Certain high-growth teams such as those working on newer initiatives like AI or experimental products can still offer dynamic, zero-to-one opportunities. Success often depends on finding and joining these pockets within the broader organization.

As companies scale, politics become inevitable - Big Tech companies are no exception. While these environments offer great compensation and talent density, navigating organizational complexity and interpersonal dynamics becomes a critical part of engineering success.

- **Politics Are Inevitable in Large Orgs**: As tech companies grow, layers of leadership and cross-functional dependencies make decision-making complex. Engineers must often align with numerous stakeholders, especially when aiming for senior or staff roles.
- **Shipping Requires Consensus-Building**: Even seemingly minor changes can require significant internal negotiation. One example cited involved a six-month project to enlarge a button being blocked just before launch due to last-minute leadership disagreement.
- **People Over Code**: The technical work is often less challenging than influencing and winning over colleagues who may disagree or have competing priorities.
- **Burnout from Frustrated Efforts**: Senior engineers can burn out after investing months into initiatives that get shut down due to misaligned incentives or lack of political foresight.
- **Success Requires “Playing the Game”**: Engineers who are averse to navigating internal politics may struggle, especially in high-visibility roles. Building relationships proactively is often essential for seeing projects through.

Engineers at Big Tech often experience a deep lack of control over their work, compensation, and long-term impact. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Politics and top-down decision making mean engineers can invest heavily in projects only to have leadership reject ideas or directions with no recourse
- Compensation elements like company multipliers are tied to overall corporate performance, which individual engineers have virtually no influence over
- Constant reorgs, shifting org charts, and manager reshuffling create instability and make teams feel like they’re moving for reasons that aren’t always merit-based
- Big Tech frequently kills projects, even promising or widely used ones, because they don’t meet multibillion-dollar expectations, leaving engineers demoralized and powerless over product fate

Here are the core points from the lesson:

- **Too Many Smart Engineers, Too Few Big Problems Left** - Decades of optimization have left many core products (like Facebook Home Feed) nearly maxed out, making impactful changes rare and promotions harder to earn.
- **Engineers Flee Mature Teams in Search of Scope** - Engineers often transfer to newer initiatives (e.g., Meta’s Portal) to find unclaimed problems they can own—especially critical in systems with forced promotion deadlines.
- **Forced Promotion Policies Increase Pressure** - At Meta for instance, engineers must be promoted from mid-level (E4) to senior (E5) within five years or face termination, driving a scramble for high-impact work. This is awkward when there's a profound lack of scope.
- **Promotion Bottlenecks Are Common** - Transitions like Amazon SD2 → SD3 or Google L4 → L5 are notorious for being highly competitive, political, and frustrating due to overlapping ambitions.
- **Scarcity of Senior/Staff-Level Scope** - Teams without senior-level problems to solve—or ones where existing staff already own them—make it nearly impossible for newer engineers to grow beyond a certain level.

While Big Tech compensation packages can be extremely lucrative, they are also highly volatile. Much of the reward is tied to company stock, which fluctuates dramatically and is largely outside any individual engineer’s control. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- **Equity Makes Up the Majority of Pay at Senior Levels** - Compensation often includes base salary, a bonus, and a large portion in restricted stock units (RSUs), especially as engineers become more senior.
- **Stock Price Volatility Can Be Emotionally Draining** - Engineers may become fixated on stock movements - checking daily gains or losses that can translate to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in value swings.
- **Lack of Control Over Equity Value** - Company-wide factors like earnings calls or buyback announcements - rather than individual performance—drive major stock movements. A 26% drop in Meta's stock once erased $250 billion in market cap overnight.
- **Advice: Sell Regularly, Avoid Emotional Attachment** - Diversification and emotional detachment are key. Holding too much company stock creates psychological and financial vulnerability, especially in market downturns.
- **Stock-Based Wealth Is Largely Unpredictable** - Stock spikes and crashes often follow unexpected logic, making it nearly impossible for individual employees to anticipate or influence outcomes.

Working at Big Tech can expose engineers to ethical dilemmas and reputational challenges, especially as these companies grow in size and societal influence. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- **Ethical baggage and public scrutiny** - Every large tech company accumulates controversy over time, from privacy scandals to monopolistic behavior. Employees often face external judgment and may feel conflicted about the company’s broader impact, such as gentrification and social displacement caused by high salaries and rapid expansion.
- **Disconnect between purpose and individual contribution** - Engineers may feel demoralized realizing their role (e.g., being engineer #80,532 at Google) probably won't meaningfully contribute to making the world a better place - especially for those motivated by social impact or purpose-driven work.
- **Reputation can shift dramatically** - Facebook was once viewed positively (e.g., in the late 2000s), but public perception reversed dramatically after scandals like Cambridge Analytica. Engineers went from proudly wearing company swag to avoiding brand affiliation in public. Similar sentiment shifts can hit any big company, even well-intentioned ones.
- **Moral complexity of innovation and market power** - As companies grow in influence and value, their innovations may disrupt other industries, leading to job loss or social backlash. While sometimes justified in capitalist terms, the ethical line becomes murkier when dominance is maintained through questionable means.

After exploring the wide range of pros and cons of working at Big Tech companies, the speakers emphasize that choosing this career path is highly personal and should align with one's individual goals and priorities.

- **No One-Size-Fits-All Answer**: The intention isn’t to prescribe a particular path, but rather to offer transparency around what working at Big Tech is really like—information they wish they'd had early in their careers.
- **Reflect on Personal Priorities**: It's crucial to explicitly list what matters most in a career - whether that’s compensation, work-life balance, tech stack, team culture, or product space—and then align job choices accordingly.
- **Framework for Decision-Making**: By identifying top 2–3 priorities and working backward from those, engineers can better evaluate whether Big Tech aligns with their long-term goals.

We outline scenarios where Big Tech can be a highly advantageous career move—especially for early-career engineers or those seeking financial security and stability.

- **Ideal for Early-Career Engineers**: Big Tech provides a strong engineering foundation for those just out of college or with limited experience. Newer engineers are more adaptable to the culture and expectations.
- **Higher Workload Tolerance**: Younger professionals often have the energy and flexibility to handle the demanding pace and longer hours that come with Big Tech roles.
- **Minimal Habits to Unlearn**: Junior engineers aren’t “programmed” with habits from less rigorous environments, making it easier for them to succeed in fast-paced, high-standard teams.
- **Excellent Compensation**: For those with high financial needs—whether due to family obligations or living in expensive cities—Big Tech offers some of the most competitive compensation packages, including equity.
- **Job Stability**: These companies offer consistent employment for high performers, making them a good choice for those with lower risk tolerance who prefer predictability.

We discuss reasons why Big Tech may not be the right fit for everyone, especially as career goals and personal priorities evolve over time.

- **High Work-Life Balance Needs**: For those with growing personal commitments—like family, health, or other priorities—Big Tech’s demanding environment may no longer be sustainable or fulfilling.
- **Low Tolerance for Pressure**: The performance-driven, competitive nature of Big Tech can be overwhelming for those who prefer a calmer, less intense work atmosphere.
- **Preference for Independent, Heads-Down Work**: Engineers who thrive in solo coding environments without heavy documentation, collaboration, or politics may find the collaborative and process-heavy style of Big Tech frustrating.
- **Avoidance of Office Politics**: Success often requires political navigation, influence-building, and strategic communication—elements that don't appeal to everyone.
- **Desire for Simplicity**: Not everyone aspires to climb the corporate ladder; for those who just want to write good code without excessive overhead, there are better environments than Big Tech.

We suggest reframing the question from *"Should I join Big Tech?"* to *"When should I join Big Tech?"*, since careers are long and dynamic.

**Benefits of Joining Early in Career**:

- Helps build a strong technical foundation and network when you're still a “blank slate.”
- Younger professionals often tolerate intense work environments better and adapt more quickly.
- Early high compensation can fund future ventures, such as startups or sabbaticals.
- The prestige and connections can accelerate future career moves or entrepreneurial efforts.

**Risks of Joining Early**:

- You might get *addicted* to the high salary and lifestyle, making it hard to leave for riskier opportunities like startups.
- Over time, lifestyle creep (e.g., mortgage, luxury spending) can reduce your willingness to take professional risks.

**Benefits of Joining Later in Career**:

- Allows you to first take bold bets (e.g. startups) when personal financial obligations are low.
- You may be hired at a **higher level** based on your broader experience—potentially earning more equity than someone promoted internally.
- Helps avoid promotion bottlenecks (e.g. SD2 to SD3 at Amazon, L4 to L5 at Google) by lateral hiring into senior roles.

**Risks of Joining Later**:

- Financially, the expected value of going solo or taking high-risk paths is lower due to high startup failure rates.
- Missing out on earlier career momentum and brand-building that Big Tech can provide.

We wrap up the discussion on working in Big Tech and end with an important philosophical reminder about career and life priorities.

- **Happiness &gt; Hype**: At the end of the day, *it's not worth it if you're not happy*. Your career is a means to a fulfilling life—not the purpose of your life. Prioritize what genuinely brings you joy and purpose.
- **Software Has Many Paths**: There isn’t just one archetype of success in tech. Whether you're a master debugger, a product-savvy tech lead, or a great communicator, there’s a path that fits your strengths and passions.
- **Find Work That Feels Effortless**: If there’s something you enjoy doing so much that it doesn’t feel like work—chase that. Use it as a compass for your long-term career direction.
- **Ignore Peer Pressure**: Just because working at Big Tech is glorified doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for everyone. Many engineers thrive and find faster growth at smaller startups or hyper-growth companies.
- **Be True to Yourself**: Use the information provided as tools—not mandates. The goal is to make **informed, authentic decisions** based on your own values, priorities, and vision for your life and career.

The main idea is to *reflect intentionally*, embrace your individuality, and chart a career path that aligns with your unique definition of success.