> Seniors at FAANG type companies simply dont do that much.
I initially mis-interpreted this sentence to be talking about quantity rather than roles, it seems like others here got the same impression. It’s important to recognize the part you quoted was talking about quantity and not role, and what you’re talking about is role and not quantity. It’s also important to recognize that engineers with a lot of experience are biased toward working at stable companies and not startups. From experience, I would agree with the article that the common expectation in startups very much is that you have to make do with junior developers when hiring, and if you get high quality senior engineers with a lot of experience, you’re pretty lucky.
While there’s some truth to startup roles sometimes being more broad (less focused) and big-company roles being more deep (more focused), might it be best to stick to personal experience rather than claim what a broad group of other people’s experiences is without really knowing?
As a founder with a partner in an initially 2-person company, I did only front-end while my partner did only back-end. Our dev roles were more focused than by previous big-company jobs, but we both had to do non-dev work too, of course.
As a sr/principal in a FAANG-type company, I’m doing more mentoring of juniors, more sales and support calls, and also more math & research, than I was doing with my startup. I’m also involved in product coding, algorithms, and design prototyping.
So, speaking personally, I can’t exactly confirm your view that startups are broad and big-company roles are narrow. For me, the difference is that with a startup there were some tasks that I just don’t have at a big company, like doing taxes. The other main difference is that my own company was mine, and big-company work is structured around the organization. It’s not so much a difference in the amount or the type of work, but a difference in the ownership and motivations and what success and failure looks like at any given time.