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Comment by lostlogin | Hacker News Reader

> Such a shame Facebook is considered a prestigious place to work.

Is it? It’s not my industry but I haven’t got that impression from reading threads here.

It definitely was until ~5 years ago. I think the 2016 election was the turning point. There has been a stream of negative PR for Facebook since then, and it seems like everything they've done for damage control only made things worse (especially anything from Zuckerberg).

The irony is not lost on me that HN decries social media for being one massive echo chamber and are just as detached from the real world themselves.

I’d argue against you here. I’d say that HN represents quite a diverse cross section of people, and to our mutual credit we all manage to keep it fairly cordial and fun. We all come from different backgrounds and experiences and yet find it fun and enjoyable to come here and talk about technology and have a good time. I may disagree with folks here from time to time, but I have no doubt that HN is a home for people from all walks of life and the last thing that comes to my mind, when thinking about HN, is that it’s an echo chamber. Quite the contrary, some of the folks here help me learn to think about things from a different perspective and I enjoy it.

Look up the FAANG acronym. It’s a collection of companies that are supposedly the “best” to work for. Facebook is the F

Edit: Here’s an example Reddit thread of what I mean: https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/mnl4u2/why_does_e...

FAANG is composed of large companies - not great companies. Those employers rarely make it onto genuine lists of best employers and if you want real pedigree on your resume you'll want to come out of a small but successful company. You can be asleep at the wheel for two years and leave a FAANG with neutral or positive reviews because you were sociable - if you helped grow a tiny company into a small company recruiters will take immediate notice.

lets be real, recruiters will take notice no matter what

I think your average "asleep at the wheel" Facebook employee could easily do the work of 10 or 20 ethical guys from your average Midwestern consulting firm.

(Unless the work involves having some sort of strong moral compass anyway)

Facebook is one the highest paying companies, the highest among FAANG. High paying companies = high demand = selective = high prestige. I would say Google and Facebook are probably the two most in demand companies (out of all companies) to work for among software engineers.

(I frequent career fairs, blind and cscareerquestions)

Have you actually work at one of these companies or did you form these notions based on others' perceptions of legacy companies like IBM and Oracle? None of the FAANG are known for good WLB outside of Google. Actually a common criticism of Amazon and FB is PIP culture so I'm not sure where you can fall asleep at the wheel for two years just because you were sociable.

I thought FAANG criteria is more a measure of how much these places pay, otherwise Microsoft would be on the list (with a market cap 2.3tn).

The original acronym was for stock performance.

That's not the case at all. Unless you are one of the first few engineers of what will become an Amazon, Google, Uber, etc... coming from a small company gives very little leverage on negotiations with recruiters, visbility, etc... , the scale of problems you deal with at FAANG is 100x bigger and more impacting than at a random placeholder.io company. I'm not saying there are not many engineers working at small companies better than some of the devs at FAANG, that's a fact. Also a company success very often, have very little to do with their engineers. If you want real pedigree, start your own software company, and make it a success. Working for another person doesn't give you any pedigree. Is just a job, you work, they pay you, and that's pretty much it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishful_thinking

Maybe I'm out of the loop, but I thought Facebook specifically was known for being the highest paying of the FAANGs because they are the least prestigious (and also people have ethical concerns re: their products).

Okay I'm not sure how HN convinced themselves of this but higher paying means more prestige, not less prestige because "no one is willing to join otherwise". It would seem pretty intuitive but apparently not on here where the mental gymnastics to discredit FANG has somehow correlated lower pay with better job these days.

And prestige among the FANGs generally goes: Google and FB in their own tier (depending on whether you value WLB or compensation and promotion rate), Apple and Netflix slightly lower, and Amazon (and Microsoft, albeit not a FANG) much lower than all of them.

There is frankly a whole self-flagellatory thing going there. Plus well, selection bias is everywhere. People post more about complaints.

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