Just A Cog In The Machine

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.