Name: Lack of Control
Uploaded: 2025-11-21T20:57:59+00:00
Duration: 6 min 2 s
Description: Engineers at Big Tech often experience a deep lack of control over their work, compensation, and long-term impact

Lack of Control

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

Engineers at Big Tech often experience a deep lack of control over their work, compensation, and long-term impact