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Nice, but tools are only one thing to miss about development at Google (or any other of the FAANGs).

I found the more meaningful thing is the ecosystem of smart engineers, and the ability to find others who face similar problems, exchange ideas and solutions. It's a skill of its own to find these people and learn their "language", but once you do, it's a huge multiplier that is hard to find elsewhere.

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I would say there are lots of smart engineers at non-FAANG companies too; especially engineering-first orgs.

I think what the OP intends is its size and diversity of the talent pool. Obviously, there are so many smart engineers outside FAANG, but it's also true that having world-class experts on cryptography, networking, distributed system, web technologies, machine learning, microprocessor, compiler etc etc... in a single company is something very rare.

I work at a FAAG-adjacent and the single most valuable thing for me personally is being able to hang out in the Slack channel where all the old timers idle. If I need context on something and nobody on my team knows, 9 times out of 10 I can ask there and someone will at least point me in the right direction.

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